


Double Helix

by discopolice



Category: Wakfu
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-11-25
Updated: 2013-03-02
Packaged: 2017-11-19 11:49:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 100
Words: 24,292
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/572949
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/discopolice/pseuds/discopolice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They are past, present and future, together and all at once, and in moments like this the fabric of time falls apart and they unify into the one singular concept that is two Eliatropes in the snow.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. holding hands

**Author's Note:**

> Done as two discrete drabblesets: one for the 30-day OTP challenge, and another working through 64-damn-prompts on livejournal. Then I did a couple to round it off to 100 and swore I wouldn't do any more than that. Quality varies heavily.

Qilby, 21 but eternal, may never tire of these little moments.

They lie on a bed of sand under a canopy of stars anchored by two moons, the night their escape from the dead heat of summer; Qilby has successfully dragged Chibi out of his workshop and into the dark to his favorite stargazing spot. They lie across the beach linked only by their hands and the night sky above them.

"You're growing your beard out," Chibi remarks, and pulls at the long trail of hair on Qilby's chin with his other hand. "It looks nice." Qilby smiles and swats Chibi's hand away. A long but comfortable silence passes until Chibi breaks it.

"Do you think anything's up there? Anyone else, like us?"

"There's no doubt in my mind," Qilby responds, resolute even with the smile on his face, focusing hard on a constellation as though his eyes could rocket him up to it. "And someday we'll go there."

"Hey, don't be too serious; I'm the old man here! I'm pushing thirty already!" Chibi laughs and laces his fingers tighter with Qilby's. The sound of Chibi's carefree laughter over the crashing waves sounds like bells to Qilby's fond ears.

"Thirty isn't old at all," Qilby says; he knows what it is to be old.


	2. cuddling

Chibi likes to think of them as two pieces to a puzzle.

They have made bouncing ideas off each other a sport, and the void in the knowledge of one is filled easily by the other. Chibi is mildly disturbed, but charmed, by Qilby's ability to finish his sentences. So often they work in tandem, where Qilby observes and hypothesizes and Chibi makes from those observations something entirely new.

The analogy is especially apt in moments like this, though; when sweaty and spent under the night sky they settle into one another, eyes closed and hearts full. Being the taller of the two, Qilby sets his chin on Chibi's head and curls around him protectively, letting his hair fall over Chibi's face; after flicking Qilby's beard out of his face, Chibi slides one arm around the other man and sighs deeply into his neck.

Even for the wordiest of Eliatropes there would be no words necessary now, not in this minute of calm in the raging rivers that are their minds, which never stop churning unless confronted with the most perfect of stillness. Constantly their minds work over puzzles, from the most minute to the most major, until they reach that solution.

This is one puzzle that's already solved, Chibi thinks as he falls into a deep sleep.


	3. gaming

"This doesn't even seem realistic," Qilby sneers at a copy of  _Krosmosz Journey 2._  "It took us  _years_  to traverse all these stars! And what is this ship? Where is its power source? Where do they get all this Wakfu, because they aren't taking any Wakfu and they have to get it  _somewhere_ —"

"It's fantasy, so shush and put the game in," Chibi says. Qilby does, and the system sputters to life; a bit of steam vents out its side as the title screen flickers to life. Qilby squints a little and rests the controller awkwardly in his hands, but after a second he starts to scoot closer and closer to the screen in front of him.

"I refuse to believe I'm so old I can't see." Qilby's face contorts in confusion, and he pushes his glasses up his face a little; his features soften in relief. "Ah, there." Chibi snickers and moves up next to Qilby, pressing their shoulders together.

"So, you move this stick to move around, and you press these buttons to shoot, and this one to reload," Chibi explains, as though Qilby is five. Qilby raises an eyebrow.

"Which one of these unrealistic ships is me?"

"That one."

About thirty minutes later, they have moved progressively closer and are now jamming elbows and leaning back and forth. Chibi is grinning like a wildcat; Qilby's face is so close to the screen his nose is practically touching it.

"I will beat you at this damn game," Qilby snarls as he loses to Chibi again.

He doesn't.


	4. on a date

Qilby is reading by the light of a dim oil lamp when he hears a knock at the door.

With bleary eyes he pulls his hat back on and steps into the hallway to see Chibi standing with a blanket tossed over his shoulder and a basket full of pastries in his arm; he looks entirely too awake for midnight, and Qilby wonders if he couldn't sleep either.

"I figured you'd be awake," Chibi says cheerfully. "Come on, we're going somewhere."

—

With autumn leaves crunching under their feet, the two trek through the dark until they come to a cliff overlooking the ocean; fifty feet below them waves crash against the rock, and there are no lights here to impede a view of the night sky. A telescope is set up on a tripod near the edge. While Chibi shakes the blanket out and sets the basket down, Qilby can only look in amazement at the view before him and wonder how in all his travels of the planet, he's never found this place.

"Do you like it?" Chibi asks, smiling and patting his telescope. "This is my favorite spot to stargaze when I can't think anymore. And you, my lucky Qilby, are the first to see it!"

"It's beautiful," Qilby whispers in awe. He turns to Chibi, takes a few steps towards him, grabs his hand and holds it, takes in the stars for a few moments; then he kisses Chibi softly on the lips. "Thank you."


	5. kissing

He can feel the other man's Wakfu every time they touch.

With each caress of a face pale from not seeing the sun in weeks, each brush of lips against cheeks or ears or chins, each stroke of fingers on back, Qilby feels more alive than he ever has, warmer with the soft and  _living_  body of the only man to ever truly understand him in his arms. Everything seems brighter; the setting sun, the scenery he's seen some million times, but more than anything Chibi in front of him, the wings atop his head twitching, a devious twinkle in his eyes that Qilby can never get enough of seeing.

Their lips link and it's not like fireworks; they've done this dance far too many times for it to be new. Yet it is a slow burn, running up Qilby's spine and into his arms, which clutch Chibi closer as their lips meet again, then again; their tongues touch and Qilby's heart speeds up, his whole body tingling with some emotion he can't quite describe, something that may be beyond the scope of his impressive vocabulary. They pull apart and rest their foreheads together; their noses touch, and Chibi laughs in happiness. The gesture is contagious; soon Qilby finds himself chuckling, too.

Qilby swears he can almost feel their Wakfu become one, with the energy he feels flowing between them.


	6. wearing each others' clothes

"So that's where my hat went," Chibi says as he stands over a teenage boy snoring and cuddling black fabric like a teddy bear.

With a start Qilby awakes, scrambles backwards, and flings Chibi's hat away from him, face quickly turning bright red. Chibi snorts and grabs Qilby's hat from the nightstand. Qilby starts sputtering in some mix of embarrassment and anger and grabs at the white hat; Chibi swings it out of his reach, and he nearly falls out of his bed. In the process of grabbing for his glasses, he actually does.

When Qilby sorts himself out and turns to petulantly glare at Chibi, the older man is wearing his hat. It fits snugly over his head and doesn't hang over his forehead like it does Qilby's; his thick white hair bunches out the sides wildly. Qilby, for a delirious second, thinks Chibi looks almost cute in his hat, with the oversized horns looking comically large on Chibi's head, but that doesn't change the fact that his long-standing boyfriend is practically wearing his underwear in front of him.

"I'm not giving yours back until you put mine on." Not one to back down from a challenge, Qilby grabs the older man's black hat in a huff and pulls it over his head – or tries to. His wings are much larger than Chibi's, and the fabric gets stuck on them again and again. By the time Qilby gives up and chucks the hat at Chibi's chest, the other man has laughed himself to the point of tears.

"Well, Qilby," Chibi says, "I guess your head is just too big."


	7. cosplaying

"You lost the bet, you have to do it."

" _I will not._ A man in this council has  _dignity._ "

"You said, 'if Yugo and Nora are involved, I will personally dress up like a sexy Bow Meow,' and I am holding you to it. You were the one who didn't think not to make bets with someone who remembers all his past lives." Qilby strokes his beard with ridiculous pride and swings the basket back and forth, staring straight into Chibi's eyes with the Smuggest Smirk in the World across his middle-aged face. "Look, I even got Mina to make you a costume."

"It was a  _joke_ , Qilby—"

"No excuses. Go change." Chibi takes the basket in his hands, sneers at Qilby, and scampers into the stall. Qilby pushes his glasses up and grins, the satisfaction of  _winning_  still fresh on his mind.

Five minutes later, Chibi stomps out of the stall and huffs in a way entirely unbecoming for a man of forty. He is wearing black shorts that cling to his hips, oversized cat ears over his wings, and – the final straw that makes Qilby bust out laughing – a long black tail attached to his belt. As Qilby snickers into his hand, Chibi stands still with his hand on his hip; from nearby, Mina wolf whistles.

"Chibi, I must say," Qilby says with a waggle of his eyebrows, "you look quite sexy in that." He's still laughing, though, so Chibi just gives him a look and leaves.


	8. shopping

As part of the fallout from a highly embarrassing incident involving the Wik-Fi network and copious amounts of hard liquor, Chibi has been sentenced to shopping duty for the Council for three months. Qilby isn't sure how he got roped into tagging along, but he's sure the means used were highly coercive.

"I'm not sure how this is  _your_  punishment, but  _I'm_  acting as the mule," Qilby mutters as he struggles to carry three large baskets of vegetables, while Chibi only carries a small sack.

"You're young, your joints can handle it, and I think I'm still hung over," Chibi says. "Now let's see here… Nora wants… why did she write pickles three times and nothing else?"

Qilby is already miles ahead of Chibi; he has paid for a large crate of pickles and is trying to find out how to balance them on his head without compromising the structural integrity of the pile in his arms. With a chuckle, Chibi takes the crate and heaves it up in his arms; Qilby scowls.

"I thought your joints couldn't handle it."

When they finish their shopping, both men are nearly covered in boxes; they trudge back to their dragons, who balk at the load they're expected to carry.

"I guess Qilby is a kinder man than I had anticipated," Grougal mutters, "carrying all this for the consequence of  _your stupidity._ " Chibi chuckles in embarrassment. Qilby smiles at Grougal, and then shoots a glare over to his laughing boyfriend. Grougal continues, with a smile towards Shinonome: "I'll handle most of it; it would be a sin to make a lady carry this much."


	9. with friends

"For the next order of business, we need to determine who will take primary responsibility for Yugo and Adamai," Chibi announces at the head of the table, hands folded and back straight. Qilby scribbles notes furiously in his notebook.

"I can help! I like babies!" Nora yells, with all the tact her 14-year-old self can muster, that being absolutely none. On the table, the young Yugo reaches out of his basket, grabs Nora's finger, and giggles. Mina chuckles, offers one of her hands to the baby, and with the other pulls on Nora's hat teasingly.

"You're still a baby yourself," she says. Nora scoffs and folds her arms. On the other side of the table, Glip clears his throat and sits straight; Baltasar's pleading glances for someone to help detach Adamai from his ear go ignored.

"I will take care of Yugo's education, as usual," Glip says, "but Baltasar and I are far too busy teaching to raise a child myself."

"Understood," Chibi says, and then looks directly at Qilby. "Well, how about Qilby and Shinonome? I feel they could handle the kids." Qilby makes a face and holds it until Chibi's hand, under the table, slips into his own and the king gives him a secret smile. " _I'll help you,_ " he whispers.

" _You had better,_ " Qilby mutters sideways before facing the whole table and saying, "I'll do it."

After the meeting, Shinonome gives Chibi a high-five, and then smirks over at Grougaloragran.

"You're helping me with Adamai."

"I know."


	10. animal ears

"You remind me of a fox," Chibi idly remarks to Qilby one day as he clips wires on something or another.

"Hmm," Qilby responds; he is intently watching bugs frolic under a magnifying glass. "I feel like I've heard you say that before."

"You probably have," Chibi says, and he connects two wires; they spark, and something whirs to life. "Well, you're smart, obviously – but you're sly, too, and sneaky! And the more forbidden it is, the more you want to get your nose into it."

"Ah, you got it to work?" Qilby looks over in interest at Chibi's new creation, which thrums with both electricity and Wakfu; Chibi is straddling a chair and bouncing up and down in excitement, and all he can do is nod and grin for a good few minutes before he nearly collapses forward in the chair.

"Goddess, I'm  _tired._  I haven't slept in  _three days._ "

Qilby stands, shaky himself from his long observations, stands and slips an arm under Chibi's shoulders, steadying the weary man.

"You seem to me like a weasel; too curious for your own good and intensely focused, and even a bit devious," Qilby says tenderly, looking down on Chibi with soft eyes for just a second – but then he sniffs and pulls away.

"And you smell  _terrible_." Chibi balks; Qilby laughs and grabs his hand. "Shall we go to the baths?"


	11. 2 am

The chill of 2 AM wraps around Qilby like a blanket; the breeze strains against his fingers to flip the pages of his book, to no avail. For a moment, he thinks to tug on a robe, but it is taking all his concentration to hold the pages open and take in the words at the same time. His eyes are weary from a long day, but sleep evades his grasp like the wind, so he sits and reads outside, at this point Chibi showed him many lifetimes ago.

The starry sky is his canopy on this cliff, the spiky grass his sheet; all he can hear are the waves crashing meters below where his feet dangle. The only lights are the moon and the small lantern sitting next to him; there is nobody awake, nobody to disturb him as he swallows knowledge whole, takes in the smell of the ocean and the rustling of the grass, and in the back of his head wonders what's up beyond that sky.

He hears rustling behind him but is only snapped to attention when a tripod clacks on the ground next to him; he looks up to find Chibi settling his telescope on top of it with his scarf drawn tightly over his shoulders. Chibi looks down at him, smiles, and slips down to sit next to the man with millennia behind his stare.

"Hey. You can't sleep either?"

"Exactly," Qilby answers, and sinks into the arm Chibi slips around his shoulders.


	12. making out

Chibi comes home from a week-long journey to a hard kiss on the lips from Qilby. Upon pulling back and asking why Qilby is so eager, he only gets another, more furious kiss and a sharp bite on his lower lip.

"Bed," Qilby demands. Chibi lets himself be dragged off to Qilby's bedroom, but again can't resist asking why, with a hint of teasing to his voice.

"Do you  _know_  how  _frustrating_  it is to be in charge of a teenage Yugo once every thousand years? I was about to go insane and it's  _your fault_ ," Qilby growls. "Now get on the bed."

Chibi's seen many a monster before on his travels with Grougal, but perhaps none as scary as a frustrated and aggressive Qilby; so he slinks back and sits on the bed. Qilby is instantly straddling him, kissing all his questions away and sliding his tongue like a snake over the other man's, grabbing and pulling on his hat. Chibi puts a hand on the small of Qilby's back and pulls him closer; Qilby grunts, a primal sound from the bottom of his chest, and breaks away to tear off Chibi's scarf and start leaving bites between his neck and shoulder.

"Well," Chibi pants, "if this is the way you react, I should go out on trips more often." Qilby gives him the most piercing look Chibi's ever had directed at him and shoves him down on the bed.


	13. eating ice cream

"Hey, Qilby, I brought you some ice cream," Chibi reports to a pouting Qilby reading a book on the other side of the Sadida picnic. "Cheer up, he'll get over it."

"Maybe in fifty years," Qilby grumbles, until he realizes Chibi is holding a bowl of vanilla ice cream out to him; he smiles and takes the bowl from Chibi's hands. "Enough of that, though. Have a seat." Chibi does, and Qilby sets the bowl down on the blanket and slides his arm around Chibi's shoulders. Chibi can sense he's holding back, so he looks the older man straight in the eye.

"I can tell Yugo still cares about you," Chibi says; his voice comes out in a near-whisper. "He's just hurt and angry, at both of us. I know you don't like each other, but you've gotten along before, right?" He smirks and spoons ice cream into his mouth, and then holds a spoonful out to Qilby. "Eat, before it melts."

"I will not have you feeding me," Qilby says with a smirk, and plucks the spoon out of Chibi's hand to swallow the treat quickly. For a few seconds he looks profoundly satisfied; after those moments of bliss, however, he starts wincing and clutching at his forehead. Chibi jumps forward in worry, but once he realizes what's happening, he just laughs as Qilby grabs his temples and grunts.

"Brainfreeze, huh?"

"Hush."


	14. genderswapped

Qilby is a quiet woman, but the few words she speaks command authority. She is of tall stature, a well-rounded hourglass with long legs that carry her in a slow but deliberate gait; her arms taper out to long-fingered hands that handle precise scientific instruments in her better moments and slam against tables in her worse. She wears glasses that perch atop her pointed nose, and her fiery eyes stare directly into one's soul and pierce it cleanly through like a beam of Wakfu. Right now, they're currently piercing the scrambled head of a hung-over young lady alternately trying to connect circuitry and slumping against the table groaning.

"Perhaps drinking last night while working was a poor idea," Qilby offers. Chibi rests her head against the desk, blue eyes dull with frustration, short hair fanning out over the wood from under her hat.

"What was I even  _doing,_ " she moans, curling her knees up to her comparatively small chest as she tries in vain to fit the pieces of machinery together.

"It may be lost to the world," Qilby says. "When you're drunk, of course you won't work as well-" She's interrupted by a long, pale finger pointing straight at her.

"See, here, there's like a curve of drunkenness," Chibi murmurs, drawing out a pair of invisible axes on the desk with her finger. "Right around here-" Chibi spikes the finger up – "you're a genius. But you start drinking more, and whoops, there it goes." Her hand drops off the desk in the last downward spike, and she groans again. "I have a headache."


	15. different clothing style

"I'm just not used to this style of formal wear," Qilby mutters as he stands shirtless in the bedroom, shoving his belt buckle in the general direction of the other end with his only hand. "Eliatrope clothing was always more forgiving."

"You won't be able to get that," Chibi says. His shirt is half-unbuttoned, and his grey vest is hanging off one arm. "Let me." He kneels, shoes squeaking against the ground, and slips the belt's end into the buckle. Chibi promptly returns to buttoning his shirt and vest as Qilby deliberately slips his arm through the white shirt, pulls it onto his other shoulder, and starts trying to one-hand the buttons.

"What is this, exactly?" Qilby is completely befuddled by the necktie on his dresser; he holds it delicately draped across his hand like some new specimen of study. Chibi laughs and pulls his own tie tight to his neck, then waggles it at Qilby. "Ah. I can't do that with one hand, you'll need to help me."

Chibi's already a step ahead of him; he has the tie in his hands and is gently pushing Qilby's hair out of the way to loop it around his neck. With quick strokes of his hands he ties the fabric and pushes the knot to Qilby's throat, then gives the fabric a little playful tug. Qilby enjoys that perhaps a bit too much; he gasps as he's pulled forward, reaches an arm forward to steady himself, and kisses Chibi on the lips warningly.

"If you do that, we may never get out of here," Qilby hisses. Chibi just chuckles and buttons his jacket; Qilby admires the other man with a gentle smile as he pulls on his own.

"Shall we go?" Chibi says, and grabs Qilby's hand to lead him out of the room.


	16. morning rituals

Qilby, despite his habit of staying up long hours, tends to rise with the sun. There's something about the first morning light that energizes him, no matter how boring the landscape it illuminates, and as he grows older he finds he needs less sleep (but an afternoon siesta to compensate). Today, like most days, he wakes a few minutes after dawn and immediately leaves his bed to freshen himself.

When he emerges from the bath, a towel wrapped around his waist and his hair pinned in a high knot on his bare head, he finds Chibi blearily blinking into a looking-glass and trying to run a comb through his unruly white hair.

"Today must be special; normally you'd still be sleeping," Qilby jibes. Chibi grumbles, takes a gulp of tea, and jabs at the knot in his hair with the comb.

"That's because I didn't sleep," he replies. It's quiet, more a sleepy murmur than a complete thought. On further inspection, there are dark circles under the eyes he can barely keep open. "I was drafting something, looks like an airship, but now I look at my papers and have no idea what I was doing."

"It'll come back to you," Qilby says, smiling. "For now, you need to sleep. I'll tell the council you had a long night." With the hand that's not patting his beard dry he pushes Chibi gently towards his bed; the other man tumbles into the covers directly from the chair and groans when light from the windows floods into his eyes. Qilby draws the curtains closed and walks out of the room to go make excuses for the king.

"Good morning, dear Chibi," he stops to tease. Chibi is already snoring lightly.


	17. spooning

Qilby by far prefers to be the big spoon.

At first glance it's a matter of practicality; he is taller than Chibi, and behind him he has his choice of tucking his legs comfortably beneath the other or playing footsie underneath the covers with his chin on Chibi's head. Qilby tends to curl up when he sleeps, so he contains some of Chibi's silly sprawling and asserts his right to bed space and pillows.

Qilby can't deny, though, that he gets his own sweet satisfaction from holding Chibi like this. He has always been the black sheep, the one who struck out; but to know that the admired Chibi is his behind closed doors, to know that he is the one to have this connection with the current king, gives him both comfort and a rush of power that makes him clutch Chibi tighter to his chest.

With Chibi flopped in his embrace at 3 AM, his half-asleep whispered 'I love you,' the vulnerable face Qilby sees from the corner of his eye, Qilby knows he is the man with the most power an Eliatrope can hold. He sees Chibi's every weakness in these moments, every uncertainty; he sees the crown laid literally bare before him.

Chibi holds in his hands, for this lifetime at least, the key to the Eliatrope people; but Qilby holds the keys to the king. With them safely in his grasp he sleeps.


	18. doing something together

"That won't work," Qilby points out as he delicately flips through page after page of blueprints. "Wakfu can concentrate in organisms with greater rates of cellular activity, but it cannot collapse like that. Otherwise, it would fold into a singularity and cease to exist."

"And Wakfu cannot be created or destroyed… hmm." Chibi pokes at his lips with the back of the quill. "But there must be some compression; otherwise, these guys would be impossible!" He gestures to the petri dishes on the racks to his side, teeming with colonies of bacteria selectively bred to concentrate Wakfu in a small area. It is these tiny cells, a union of Qilby's knowledge of genetics and Chibi's mind for the flow of energy in machines (even the machine that is a living being), that power many of the small electronics Eliatropes find useful.

Qilby grunts quietly in acknowledgement, then grabs his own notebook and starts scribbling diagrams. After about twenty arrows, though, he rests his forehead in his palm and chuckles; Chibi looks over and immediately jumps back at the needless complexity of the drawing.

"You talk to  _me_  about implausible and  _this_  comes out of your brain? What is this thing? It's not efficient at all!" Chibi laughs heartily, one hand on Qilby's shoulder squeezing and the other slapping his knee. Qilby just shakes his head and laughs along.

"Don't blame me; I'm tired."


	19. in formal wear

Qilby can't see the point of a commitment ceremony for an immortal Eliatrope,  _particularly_  to a mortal. With all the lives he's seen, he figures it's useless to pledge commitment just for one when you have infinite before you; it's like taking a single raindrop from the ocean, where the raindrop is the life your mortal partner will have in comparison to your endless rebirth.

Maybe, though, his cynicism is fueled by the sweat beading under the many layers he's wearing. Or the sun beating on his head. Or the way his tie is seemingly choking him.

"He seems happy," Chibi muses. "I'm happy for him." Indeed, Yugo looks happy; he is effortless in the confining tuxedo, with a bright shining smile on his face as he holds both of Amalia's hands. Qilby, had he less restraint, would petulantly roll his eyes; instead, he tugs the knot of his tie away from his throat and slips his hand into Chibi's waiting one dangling beside him.

It isn't until Amalia, white dress and hair flowers and all, grabs Chibi's ear at the reception and says "maybe you should think about getting married" that Qilby starts to consider the idea, if only to piss Yugo off. He certainly wouldn't be lying about his commitment to Chibi for the rest of eternity.


	20. dancing

You wouldn't know it from a glance, but Qilby, through centuries of practice, has developed a keen sense for rhythm.

He leads Chibi through a waltz, feet moving lightly, his hand gently pressing on Chibi's waist to hold his upper body in position; Chibi fumbles after him, hand on his shoulder. He is looking down at the movements of his own feet, which step left and right without tune or reason.

"Look up at me," Qilby guides. "If you look down, you'll lose focus. Try to feel my movements." Chibi does, and after a few missteps (and a mildly bruised toe on Qilby's part) they are spinning, moving fluidly with the music as though the beat itself carries Wakfu through them, and others spin around them in a dance that feels like it lasts both a second and a year. Chibi realizes he  _can_  feel Qilby's movements, and that he fell in step with his gliding feet ages ago; they are connected, moving as one unit, feeling as the same being with the same united Wakfu mingling between them.

Qilby does a little spin around his own axis and laughs, the sound breathy and light-hearted, yet Chibi never leaves rhythm, keeps connected to Qilby through the music, and when the sound dies they're still joined through their hands, laughing like kids.

Chibi, in this moment, thinks he understands a little of the nature of their bond, that bond they've shared for millennia, and of his own heart that meets and mingles with Qilby's cracked soul every lifetime. They are one.


	21. cooking

Even two highly competitive cooks in the kitchen are far too many.

Neither of them can agree on the correct proportion of spices to use in the stew, nor whether the parsley is necessary (Chibi is feeling lazy and doesn't want to go to the market to get any), so they end up huddled over the table peeling potatoes and giving each other looks. There's no discussion, just the sound of knives on cutting boards and unspoken assent to who will take the next steps.

Qilby finally decides to take matters into his own hands and mix the broth and spices. With a triumphant look on his face he mixes in some cayenne pepper; Chibi catches him spooning a bit too much and stares.

"Hm?" Qilby asks; he's noticed the other man's piercing gaze on the back of his head.

"Do you  _want_  your tongue to burn off?" Chibi replies, plainly. Qilby scowls.

"It adds interest." And Chibi knows better than to argue with a perpetually bored man who remembers all of his past lives about  _interest_ , so he goes back to peeling.

When it's deemed sufficiently done and all spooned out, Chibi pops a potato in his mouth and declares there's too much spice. Qilby gets a piece of meat and declares it not spicy enough. When the rest of the council declares it perfect, they look at each other and can't help but laugh.


	22. in battle

Qilby prefers to keep his enemies at a distance; this way, they never quite find out about his lack of physical strength. He spawns portals around them with a twitch of his hand, fires off beams of Wakfu with little more than a thought, and the deep night lights up with his fire. If he plays his cards right, he barely has to move, but when he does he does it swiftly and smoothly, like the wind flowing by his side.

Chibi has no such concerns, so he just charges, usually with Grougal at his side blasting fire as he throws well-timed punches. If Qilby is the wind, he is the sand, mobile but piercing; the sort of fighter who gets straight into your eyes and blinds you with ferocity, looks straight at you as he immobilizes you with a good hit or a well-directed burst from his dragon brother.

Sometimes, Chibi gets singed, clipped by a few of Qilby's rapid fire attacks. Most of the time, though, he moves too quickly and decisively to be hurt; and Qilby's learned to read him like a book, to discern exactly where he's headed by his eye movements and the way his shoulders jerk. Together, even if Chibi doesn't remember all of it, the two have faced some formidable monsters; given history, it's easy for their bodies to fall in sync.


	23. arguing

"I won't allow it." Chibi's shoulders are squared, his face stiff, unyielding; it's the face of a king shooting down a hare-brained scheme. Qilby stands before him, face equally stiff and bearded chin high.

"We  _need to know_ ," Qilby insists, "there are certain phenomena in the Krosmosz that can't be explained by the flow of Wakfu and physics alone, and what harm is there in a controlled experiment? Do you not trust me, Chibi?"

"I saw it in a dream," he spits, "waves of purple engulfing our planet, everything dying, the place in  _ruins_ -"

"A  _dream._  You deny me on a  _dream_." Qilby shakes his head; his glasses almost fall off his face. He can feel his fists clench even though he makes no conscious effort. "Can you even tell what is prophetic and what is your own fancy anymore? Is every dream you have some great foretelling—"

"You, of  _all people_ , deny my power that you've  _seen yourself_? You, old man," and Chibi sneers and points accusingly right in Qilby's face, "are you blinded by your own boredom that you would wish death on our people for an  _experiment_? A cheap thrill? Stasis is not to be played with like a toy, and you should know that." Chibi turns heel, and without looking at Qilby snarls "I won't allow it" on his way out.

To the idle observer, it's just two middle-aged councilmen arguing; but in it holds much more than a simple clash of minds.


	24. making up afterward

Two weeks after their blowout, in the dead of night, Chibi walks into Qilby's bedroom with tea, pastries, and a deeply apologetic look on his face. Qilby's eyes only briefly flicker up from the book he's writing before he leans back in his chair and sighs deeply.

"Hey, stranger," Chibi quips. "I knew you'd be awake." He sets his gifts on the nightstand; Qilby grabs the teapot and pours some into his cup, robotically and without a word, so Chibi speaks up again. "I miss you."

"Mm," Qilby replies in agreement, and takes a deep drink of the tea. There are dark circles under his eyes; he looks to have been awake for days, but he has not been attending council meetings, instead staying in his workshop or the library. Chibi sits on the bed and takes off his hat; it's a gesture of caring, like a white flag to the other man.

"Look, I still think experimenting with stasis will lead to problems, but—" Qilby stands, moves to leave, but Chibi grabs his beard roughly and pulls his head to look at him. " _Listen to me._ "

Qilby is caught off guard and nearly falls over, but instead stills himself, as if shaken to reality; he smiles wryly, though, and bows his head to look at Chibi still sitting.

"I said things that I deeply regret, and I apologize for them." The words come out of Chibi's mouth in one breath, quickly, like they're tumbling out; Qilby looks at him hard for a few seconds, then smiles and sits next to Chibi on his bed.

"I did as well, and I should have known better. I apologize." Qilby looks as though a weight has been lifted off his chest at his words, and his shoulders relax.

"Now, my fair Qilby," Chibi takes the other's hand in both of his teasingly, "may I join you on this fine night?" Qilby laughs.


	25. gazing into each other's eyes

There are some two million years of history behind those golden eyes, and you can tell from just a glance.

But when Chibi looks longer and closer, rests his forehead against Qilby's and really  _gazes_ , he notices more things, like the way his eyes crinkle slightly at their down-turned corners when he's happy, or the tiniest dilation of his pupils. He notices the way they twitch a little when he thinks about something he doesn't want to, and the way in moments like this they light up a bit to have Chibi close to him.

Qilby's gotten used to Chibi doing this, just leaning against him and staring into his eyes for minutes at a time, but even though he knows everything there is to know about the inventor he likes to look back into those grey eyes and reflect. In them, he sees two million years ahead; he sees the swirl of thoughts about where to step next, the ideas churning in his head, the prophetic dreams that plague his nights. He sees the mind that never stops, and he sees that it's a bit like his.

They are past, present and future, together and all at once, and in moments like this the fabric of time falls apart and they unify into the one singular concept that is two Eliatropes in the snow.


	26. getting married

Yugo is flaringly, gloriously  _pissed._

They stand in full Eliatrope formal, Qilby's only hand joined to both of Chibi's; there are few flowers or ribbons, merely a Sadida officiant and a rose Mina insisted on tucking into his hat. The day is beginning to cool into evening, and Chibi wraps his cloak around him in chill.

Qilby can't stop giving sidelong glances to Yugo's brilliantly red face, grinning when he notices the king trying his damnedest to look happy with Amalia's hand in his. Yugo notices and sends a piercing glare back. Chibi just wishes the ceremony would be over so he could have a few drinks and forget that his brother and his—partner? – are giving each other Looks. It was Amalia's fault they had to do the ceremony anyway.

But then his hands drop as Qilby shakes his hand free, reaches into his pocket and pulls out a piece of carefully folded paper. With a loud clear of his throat Qilby is suddenly addressing not just him but the small crowd that's gathered, and Chibi can't help but admire his elegance as he speaks about the thousands of lives he's lived and the many ways their souls have met.

"I trust, then, that you will realize that our bond is something more than one meeting in one lifetime; it is a series of fated connections. It is something like the double helix of the genetic code, if you will. I believe it was the decision of the universe – or our goddess, however you may put it – that brings us together; and together we shall stay."

Those last words are directed not just at Chibi, but at Yugo, who sighs in resignation at the front. The two kiss, Qilby with a smug sense of triumph, and Yugo leaves to go have a drink.


	27. birthday

At some point, the years began to meld together into an incomprehensible mass that's both quick as an arrow and slow like molasses. So, naturally, when Chibi asks him "how old are you turning, anyway?" he can't give a good answer, whether it's some million years or somewhere around fifty-three.

Somewhere around the minute mark of Qilby squinting in deep thought, Chibi decides to give the man the slice of cake anyway. He takes it gratefully, sets it on the table; but then he drops his chin into his hand, back into deep thought about the correct answer to "how old are you?"

"It's the first senile member of the Council!" Nora says teasingly from the other side of the field, and Qilby pinches the bridge of his nose and sighs. "You're 54," she adds, then goes back to clowning around with Efrim.

"Maybe I  _am_  going senile," Qilby chuckles, and Chibi flicks him on the head.

"You just have so much in your head that other things get pushed out," he says. "I'm that way too. Eat your cake or I'll feed it to you."

"When I  _do_  go senile you'll be feeding me anyway," Qilby jokes cheerfully. "I'm already ancient; why not start now?"


	28. doing something ridiculous

"This is ridiculous," Qilby mutters after his first loss.

"No, it isn't; your boat is just inferior," Chibi replies, and plucks Qilby's small wooden boat out of the rushing river as it reaches the finish line. "You didn't design the hull right. Another go? The wind's blowing, that sail might give you an advantage."

"Ah, it may," Qilby says with a smirk; he's already walking up to their start point with his boat. Chibi climbs to his feet and follows, and they release their tiny boats on a count of three and chase them down the river, shooting each other grins and smack talk.

When Qilby wins by a hair, he doesn't think it's so ridiculous anymore.

Their war lengthens quickly from best of three to best of five to best of nine, and when they stop to relax along the bank they find that the sun is already setting and they're out of breath. Still, they trade talk under the sunset, their boats resting comfortably beside one another as they lie back in the grass.

"What's that about not designing the hull right?" Qilby teases. "This thing  _did_  win six races. The sail was an excellent idea."

"Mine still won more," Chibi says, and rolls over to pick up Qilby's boat and point at the hull. "See the shape? That makes it more difficult for water to pass quickly around it."

"Ah, I see."

In all the hours they're there, nobody questions that two forty-something councilmen are racing boats down the river.


	29. doing something sweet

"Bad day?"

"Bad month, but yes, I suppose."

"Come with me, I have a surprise for you." Chibi helps Qilby to his feet, grabs his hand, and leads him walking through the forest for nearly an hour guided only by a lantern in the night. They eventually emerge onto a beach, nearly barren but for a large blanket spread out a few meters down and the unmistakable shape of Chibi's telescope resting on its tripod.

"What did you plan," Qilby grumbles, more a statement than a question. Chibi grins like a kid caught in the act and flops down on the blanket with a motion for Qilby to sit next to him.

"Watch the sky," Chibi commands, just as he starts to do the same. Qilby only sees the same damn starscape he's seen for thousands of years; it's enough to know he'd rather be among them than watching them from below. He'd rather be flying between those planets up there, like—

And then he sees a streak of brilliant white flash across his vision, then another, and his eyes widen.

"Ah, how did you know there was going to be a meteor shower tonight?" Qilby asks. Chibi just chuckles and slips his hand into Qilby's; Qilby squeezes back, neck still craned to watch the sky.

"I calculated it a while ago. It's the biggest one in… 300 years, I think? I wouldn't let you miss that!" Chibi takes a short break from watching the stars and leans over to give Qilby a peck on the lips, and Qilby slips an arm around Chibi's shoulders in a silent thank you.

When dawn comes, they're still there, sleeping tangled in one another's arms.


	30. doing something hot

Qilby is out of breath; he leans over a table on the pavilion he just helped build (under Chibi's coercion) and gasps for air under the beating sun. His entire body is covered with the sheen of sweat; but Chibi's is as well, and the inventor takes a swig of water.

"Why would you make an old man do that?" Qilby complains, and cracks his joints for emphasis.

"You're 45, not 95," Chibi retorts, but then he leans over Qilby with a predatory grin on his face. "Besides," and he trails his finger down Qilby's sweat-slick face, "you look quite nice all worn out." The mood suddenly changes from whiny to playful, and Qilby smirks back at the other man.

"Ah, so this was all an attempt to seduce me after all?" Qilby turns around so he's leaning backwards over the table and hooks his ankle around Chibi's, pulling him closer.

"Who can say?" Chibi grins and descends to bite Qilby's lip briefly, then to whisper against his lips. "You're going to enjoy it anyway, so what's the point in telling?"

"And I'm quite sure you'd have me over this table if you could," Qilby says, and brings his hand to rest on the small of Chibi's back. "Isn't that right, Chibi?" He roughly pushes Chibi's body to his own, and they both let out small noises.

"Who says I can't?" Chibi decides to let those words speak for themselves and starts trailing heated kisses down Qilby's jaw; Qilby slides his hand under Chibi's shirt to scratch at his back.

"Ah, excellent point." And thus began Qilby's second workout of the day.


	31. metaphor

Qilby doesn't think time is so much an arrow as a web of interlocking portals.

For one, an arrow has a defined beginning and end. Qilby can't remember his beginning, or their beginning; it's lost somewhere in the tangled mess of memories that occupies so much of his head. The only time it ever felt like it was ending was in the few fleeting moments before death, and even then he was cognizant of the new beginning before him.

No, he knows time is circular, that it repeats, for better or worse; it's mostly for worse, that he has to watch their same mistakes cycle, and sometimes he swears he could go insane when it feels like nobody listens to him. Yet there are the tiniest moments that make it worth it; the sweet satisfaction of winning an argument, the precious few times he and Shinonome stood proud as kings of their people, the sweet taste of the sea at night.

It also helps that Chibi takes the edge off; that no matter how long gone one may be he knows their souls will meet again, that it is the universe's decision to bring their cracked hearts together continually. It helps that he can look forward to lying on the beach with him after a day of hard work, staring at the stars and letting the waves wash over their feet, or to long talks with him about a unified vision for the Eliatrope people.

If he didn't have Chibi, yes, he would surely go insane.


	32. sky

Chibi isn't sure it registers in his head that a mere few lifetimes ago, he was among those stars he is looking up at. He has his face rubbed in it when he can point at any star in the sky and Qilby can tell him details about all its planets, though.

Qilby is on now about the existence of planets that swirl with Stasis, the life forms that tap its destructive power as easily as the Eliatropes drink in Wakfu just by existing, and though even the name sends an ominous shiver down Chibi's spine he listens, enraptured with the tale the other man tells with his hands. He swears he almost sees the night sky itself in Qilby's eyes, the fire of the Krosmosz' stars converging into one Eliatrope and the burden he shoulders, but he shakes it off when the man shoulders in next to him and pushes his head aside to look through the telescope.

"There's a large part of me that wants to be there again," Qilby sighs. "I guess I just cannot settle."

"I guess looking up at the stars is like remembering your old home, huh?" Chibi makes the remark off-hand, but Chibi can almost taste the pain in his golden eyes when he rests his forehead against the prophet's. Qilby rests a shaky hand on Chibi's cheek.

"It  _is_  my home, Chibi," he whispers. " _Our_  home." Chibi doesn't reply, just wraps his arms around his scientist and holds him like he'd rocket away if he let go.


	33. lost scene

He really doesn't remember.

When he looks up in his arms under the moonlight and whispers "what were our past lives like, anyway?" Qilby knows he doesn't remember. It's thousands of lost scenes, their very past scattered to the wind, and Qilby's left to pick them back up and bind every touch, every laugh in his endless book of memory.

So Qilby tells him, in detail, tells him of their first kiss by the ocean, the time they had to take care of Nora, and the time they as teenagers decided to run away and how Yugo screamed at them when they came back a week later. He tells Chibi about the sleepless nights he and Grougal spent working away at the Eliacube and the way they laughed at all the awful prototypes and the way they spent two days in bed after it was finally done. He tells him about the times Chibi held him when he lost Shinonome and wept for days, and the times he felt he couldn't go on anymore.

And Chibi smiles, laughs at his own stupidity, looks into Qilby's eyes like some part of him almost  _remembers_  those moments Qilby's relaying to him.

It's times like this Qilby could almost be grateful for his memories, so even when those scenes are lost to Chibi's mind he keeps them safe, and so even later, when he lies alone in infinite white, he can have a million of Chibi's smiles to keep him company.


	34. degrees

Shinonome sidles up behind her brother and his partner, looks at the paper they're passing back and forth, grimaces immediately, and scoots way backwards because all she sees is _math_. Qilby feels her there and turns around to laugh at her face even as he continues scribbling on the paper.

15-degree Fourier polynomials feel like a secret language to Qilby and Chibi.

Chibi feels god-like when he thinks he's gotten something vaguely approximating the weird square wave they're looking at, then a little sad when Qilby figures out how to do it better; but then he finds a way to simplify Qilby's method further and grins in triumph. For hours they've been going, huddled around this little notebook with their quills, and it's already half-full with Chibi's engineer scrawl and Qilby's practiced handwriting but they keep going, because they need to figure out what this weird machine is actually  _doing,_  and just because it's fun.

In those graphs, too, Qilby sees their relationship, an oscillation of good and bad and kisses and clashes where they eventually meet at the same place every lifetime; even though he can vaguely figure out the signals the functions refer to, he can't help but see his own life –  _their_  own life – in any periodic function he comes across. It repeats, and sometimes it's for the positive and sometime for the negative and sometimes it just hangs around zero.

He wonders idly if he could derive a function for his partnership with Chibi, but decides that it'd need more than three axes to graph anyway, and he loves these series for their beautiful simplicity.

It's not unlike why he loves Chibi himself.

 


	35. seize the day

In a partnership of past and future, the present sometimes gets left to the wayside.

Both of their scopes are unbelievably massive, millions of years laid bare before their eyes, and even though their intersection is just this one lifetime they see enough repetition that they never really think about how it affects the right now. There is no matter of "life is short"; they are both fully cognizant of their immortality. As though history would let them forget.

Chibi's better at  _fun_  than Qilby is, though, and he sometimes shirks the workshop to go out on walks or try and communicate with tofus or just sleep all day. Qilby knows this is a Bad Idea because so many times he's seen Chibi rush to finish a project after deciding to clown around for a week, but whenever Chibi grins at him and tells him to "seize the day" he goes blank, smiles, and goes along.

"Hey, he understands me!" Chibi yells to the scientist, who is standing a few feet away plucking strange mushrooms from a tree branch. The tofu perched on his hand chirps approvingly, and Qilby just shakes his head in mixed admiration and embarrassment for the ridiculous, genius,  _lovable_  prophet he calls his own.

It's funny how the one living in the past seems impossibly old and the one living in the future seems like a child, but somehow it works out.


	36. opposite

They are, in themselves, the tiniest microcosm of the Krosmosz.

Chibi looks forward, looks to the future with his chin high; he never casts an eye on anything but what's best for his people, and he always needs something fresh, some new project to keep him busy. He flows through his duties like Wakfu, like the way the rivers flow into oceans teeming with life, and he keeps Qilby's darkness at bay with his idealism.

Qilby looks to the past, always with an eye behind him to keep enemies and mistakes at bay. Where Chibi flows he is steadfast like Stasis, won't budge on his goals even over multiple lifetimes, will take the most unethical of means to achieve an end. Sometimes he wonders if  _he_  should be wearing black, because Chibi feels impossibly pure to him even when he wakes up in his arms with that blank stare that tells Qilby he's seen the future through the bleary lens of a dream.

They are from different times, and when they fight it's like the clash of acids and bases, but when they work together, just for the moment their light and their dark, their Wakfu and their Stasis, mix and create something beyond their own comprehension, a team that can pass lifetimes by without losing strength. It's the Krosmosz itself, a constant war yet a constant partnership between two basic forces, and when both are there in equal part it tends to balance itself perfectly.


	37. passions run

They work hard, bent over their work tables passing schematics to one another, calling out "that won't work, try this instead" or "no, no, see here, what I was trying to do is…" or "that's  _genius_  but you could probably do with fewer wires, don't you think?" They examine the flow of Wakfu in their machines, and when they finally get the damn thing to work they are nowhere near done, as they still have to compare their notes on the Eliatrope people, judge Chibi's prophetic dreams against Qilby's lived experience and try to discern the right path.

They play hard, bent over that same work table but context very different, heated kisses all over skin that quickly becomes uncovered. Their eyes burn with passion as they scramble against one another, as Qilby finds himself pushed up onto the desk and suddenly without pants, and Chibi is on him working him with both hands and Qilby can only clutch at his shoulders and growl dirty words. When Chibi finally slides into him after minutes of agonizing need Qilby throws his head back, grasps himself with one hand and Chibi's hair with the other, and loses himself to the passion running between them.

When they finish they collapse into a messy heap, bodies and minds exhausted, and can barely make it back to the bed they share before they sleep just as hard.


	38. connection

Even when Chibi doesn't  _remember_  Qilby he's drawn to him.

It's like some strange thread of fate binds them together, ties one's light to the other's dark, and he finds himself in each lifetime meeting Qilby's eyes and feeling like the world is  _right_ again just from their union. It does scare him a bit that Qilby can complete his sentences, but it all feels natural after a while, and they settle into their rhythm, work and leisure as a team, trading banter and kisses even after periods where they can't stand one another.

It feels like what any normal person would call "love," but he's always seen love as something ephemeral, something for a single life alone; when Qilby drags out his massive box of old diaries and he sees so much of his own name in entries from thousands of years ago, he tends to think it's something a bit more than "love."

When he tells Qilby this, the scientist just says it was the decision of the Krosmosz. Qilby doesn't believe in fate, only what he sees with his own eyes, and even the goddess Chibi sees clearly is just an abstract concept to him; but Qilby does believe in circumstances, and starting conditions, and universal forces, and those things he loops into the easy shorthand of "will."

Eventually, they stop thinking about it so much and go to sleep.


	39. lull and storm

They argue when it's sunny.

Arguments between the two range from mild disagreements, about how to handle the kid or the project, to angry weeks-long blowouts, like  _the Stasis thing,_  which is something they just don't discuss anymore because last time they did it came to blows and Mina had to break it up. The only common thread is that they all occur in the summer, when it's so hot they can't stand to be in their own bodies and the sun beats down on their head like their caustic words.

Qilby's voice becomes derisive, like a teacher talking down to a child, because that's how he  _sees_  himself in these moments; someone much older talking to a mere kid. Even when he's boiling over and wants to scream he doesn't, speaks evenly but with the same booming voice he uses for council matters. Chibi's anger burns slowly, begins as mild irritation and turns to red-faced fury where he has to hold himself back lest he fly into a fury of punches, but even then he's still logical in his arguments.

When they apologize, the air is clear, crisp like after a storm, and often the day is turning into night. Sometimes they don't even bother to apologize; they're too exhausted, so they just tumble into the same bed and settle for the night. When they're not tired at all, though, the make-up sex is in itself exhausting.

Chibi always makes sure to remind Qilby he loves him before they fall asleep after a fight. Qilby smiles into Chibi's hair and whispers "I love you, too."


	40. animal

They're Eliatropes, but Eliatropes are animals, too. Still, when Chibi calls Qilby "predatory" the scientist doesn't quite know what to think.

He goes with a lightly amused smile and a raised eyebrow, and then savagely tears into the Gobball leg he's eating with a knowing look. Chibi takes this as validation and through a chortle and a mouthful of his own food speaks.

"You have fangs," he notices, and before Qilby can correct him he clarifies "Not incisors,  _fangs._ "

"All the better to eat you with, my dear Chibi," Qilby says, and Chibi rolls his eyes.

"You can jump me later; I'm in the middle of something here."

"How am I predatory? Or rather, how am I more predatory than you yourself?" As Qilby says this, Chibi decides he wants some of the other man's drink and takes a sip. Qilby notices. "See? You're even stealing your own mate's sustenance."

"I swear, you're just like a fox, though." Chibi drinks again from Qilby's glass. Qilby just twirls his beard in his hand knowingly.

"I've heard that from you before. You said it was because I was cunning."

"And because those eyes of yours are the eyes of pure evil." Chibi grins; he's just teasing now, or he thinks he is.

"Shh. Nobody's allowed to know I drink the blood of old councilmen at night."

" _Hey_!"


	41. children

Sometimes, they wish they could be children again.

Qilby knows he'll never be a child, and the few moments he was are a tiny speck in his memory that he can barely pick out. Nevertheless, he yearns for it, yearns for those days when he didn't have to care about how colossally the Council was fucking up or where they were going to get their next chunk of Wakfu for the Zinit, yearns for a time when he didn't have responsibilities or the weight of a million years on his shoulders. He doesn't understand why Chibi calls him childish when they fight.

Chibi just wants to be carefree again, to trek around the forests with Grougal and go on adventures, to race boats down the river with Qilby, but he has no time now. Being king is a taxing job, one that nearly kills him sometimes with the amount of people he has to manage and the weird dreams he's on his own with interpreting, and it's enough when he can have an hour of alone time with Qilby before they tumble into bed and sleep. They're in their fifties, they're getting up there, and soon it  _will_  be time for them to be kids, but Chibi's deathly afraid of death, he's afraid to forget, and even though Qilby says he should be afraid to  _remember_  instead he can't stand the idea of Qilby's memory leaving him.

"When we die, will you keep my memory safe for me?" Chibi asks his partner in bed one night. Qilby just kisses his forehead.

"I certainly have every other time, haven't I?"

When they get those sweet moments alone, where they can steal away from the rest of the Council and go on a walk or just laugh about stupid things, they almost do feel like children again.

 


	42. we all float on

The night after they race their miniature boats down the river, Chibi suggests they build an actual boat and go for a ride. Two weeks later, when the thing is actually finished, they are completely and utterly lost. Or perhaps it would be more accurate to say  _Chibi_  is lost.

Qilby finds it hilarious for the first few hours of cruising and refuses to tell Chibi where they are, despite the prophet's whining and frantic steering. Eventually, when the sun begins to rise and they grow tired, Chibi embraces the foreign feeling and they tie themselves to shore to explore.

For now, though, they get in the precious few hours of sleep they missed in the night, the sweet rest they've foregone, on their tiny boat that barely fits them both. They just snuggle into one another tighter and close their eyes against the growing light, and let the gentle waves and togetherness overcome them.

When Chibi blackmails Qilby into telling him the best route home and they get settled in, trekking towards the home they share, Qilby speaks after a long and comfortable silence.

"It all works out in the end, if you'll see," Qilby mutters, "but it's still funny watching you fret." Chibi smacks him on the arm and nearly tips the boat.


	43. chess

"Why are we playing games instead of working?" Qilby asks as he rolls a white queen between his fingers.

"You didn't say that when you won the last three times," Chibi points out, tapping a black king against the board, "or when you suggested we play in the first place."

"You need practice in battle tactics, Chibi, you can't just charge in swinging without a  _plan._ " Qilby sighs, with exasperation at Chibi's idea of 'tactics' and embarrassment that he just lost to a thirty-year-old when he's a  _goddamn million years old._

"See, though, the reason you lost that last one," the white-haired prophet explains with a finger waving in the air to illustrate, "is because you tried to be all sneaky and I caught you. You were so convinced you'd catch me from behind that you forgot to make another plan." He smirks and pulls his hat down, and Qilby's shoulders droop at having his flaws so precisely pinpointed.

"I know," the bearded man sighs. "Perhaps we both have things to work on."

Over the course of a mere hour, they've learned how  _difficult_  it is to play chess with someone who can read you like a book. These four games have taken them some four hours just because each can counter the other's tactics before they even emerge, structure their forces just on the way the other's eyes flicker. Qilby calls it eternity and Chibi calls it the goddess Eliatrope's doing, but either way it leads to the same end; a brutal battle that isn't truly a battle, a tight and seamless melding of minds, and a chess game played while they should be working.

" _Perhaps?_ " Chibi raises an eyebrow and grins. "I  _know_  you have things to work on. Best of seven?"


	44. duty

They were tasked with the duty of leading the Eliatrope people, but they themselves get lost along the way.

They're lost somewhere in space, somewhere years away from the world they knew, and Qilby sits in his lab with his head in his hands, passing over a millennium of memories. When Chibi walks in and places a hand on his shoulder he doesn't notice, lost in days where he could remember anything but this desolate darkness, and it's only when the inventor takes off his hat and kisses his scalp that he stirs.

"You don't look so great," Chibi remarks, and Qilby drops his head to his desk. The orange glow of preservative is the only light illuminating his shaking shoulders, and his hands clutch in the fabric of his pants.

"I'm lost in the years." His eyes are distant, like someone who's seen a great trauma, or has blood on his hands. Chibi leans over and rests his head against the back of Qilby's.

"The goddess Eliatrope came to me in a dream, Qilby," Chibi whispers into Qilby's hair, "and said to help you shoulder your duty. Looking at you now, I think this is what she meant." Chibi's arms slip around Qilby's shoulders, his nose buries in his neck, but Qilby stands and slams his hands on the desk and Chibi finds himself shaken off.

" _I never asked for this duty!_ " he yells; his voice cracks from the strain, his hands shake against the desk, and it's only now that Chibi notices the tear trails down the other man's gaunt face. "Not once did I ask to see us repeat our mistakes over and over like some horrible diseased play! I am sick of being forgotten!  _I am sick of being lonely!_ " At once the energy drains from Qilby's body, he drops to his knees, and Chibi is there to catch him under the arms.

"I won't pretend to understand," Chibi says, but he holds the scientist anyway.


	45. rip

Qilby has something of a short fuse, and when he gets mad he gets  _destructive._

There was the time he didn't think the kingdom was being aggressive enough with spaceflight research, so after a period of tense argument, he axe-kicked the table and nearly broke it. There was also the time he had a bit too much to drink – maybe  _a lot too much to drink_  – and he got into a brawl with a similarly drunk Yugo. It's nothing he plans consciously; he just has too much mental energy inside of him and not enough outlets.

More often, though, it results in ripping papers. He rips them to shreds, then tinier, then  _tinier_  until the parchment is confetti on the floor; even when he's not angry but just frustrated he finds himself doing it without even noticing. When Chibi finds his fingers working at a piece of paper, that's when the white-haired man knows he needs to drag Qilby out to see sunlight, lest he (and by association and close quarters, Chibi) go completely insane. Even then, Qilby ends up snapping twigs, and at that point Chibi just lets him do it if he doesn't actively join in.

Chibi calls him "Stasis" as a nickname sometimes. Qilby wears it like a badge of honor, even when it really shouldn't be.


	46. missing time

When Chibi gets back from one of his 'adventures' with Grougal and says they should "make up for lost time," Qilby honestly has to think about what that means.

After a moment, Chibi realizes what he actually  _said_  and flails his arms a bit. "Time lost together, I mean!" Qilby just laughs and pulls the prophet in for a warm hug.

"We have millions of years," he whispers, fondly. "A mere few days is nothing." At this point Chibi doesn't know who Qilby is trying to convince; he's been gone for two weeks, and it shows in the way Qilby holds him, how he's already pressing kisses between Chibi's neck and shoulder. Yet something seems a note off to Chibi, so he pushes Qilby back and stares him in the eyes, searching for the words.

He finds them. "Never take it for granted, Qilby," he says. "One can never know where the goddess will decide to take us next, yeah?" Before Qilby can protest, Chibi presses a single finger to his lips. "Don't assume there will be a next day. You never know what may happen tomorrow."

"You're right," Qilby whispers in resignation, and leans in to kiss his lover tenderly.

Years and years later, when he emerges from a prison of white, he scrambles and scrambles but can't find the missing time, or a coherent Chibi; and in that moment he longs for Chibi's touch, and realizes what "lost time" is.


	47. crest

They stand at the snowy crest of the mountain, wrapped in heavy coats and wool, their hats drawn tightly over their foreheads to keep warmth in. The cold bites into them, the snowflakes its million tiny teeth, and when they pull into each other seeking warmth they don't intend to linger long. Of course, they rarely  _intend_  to linger long when they're supposed to be working.

Part of Chibi's job is to occasionally go out and survey the land they call theirs, and report back unusual findings; though often he and Grougal go alone, sometimes they drag Qilby and Shinonome. One never knows how the life evolves from one century to the next, after all. Unfortunately, Shinonome is the only one doing work right now; Grougal is pacing in circles to stay warm, and Qilby and Chibi are sharing a Moment in the snow.

"Ah, we're facing east. Turn around," Qilby whispers, as though the stillness of the moment would break were he to speak any louder. Chibi obeys and is met only with colors, yellow and red and blue and purple streaked across the sky through wispy white clouds, and he huddles closer to Qilby and takes in the sunset.

"It's stunning up here," Chibi says. "It's like a painting." Indeed it is; it's something he could see Nora splaying over a canvas.

"But it's one without a painter," Qilby points out, "which to me makes it all the more stunning." Chibi opts not to respond and presses his face up against Qilby's, and when their freezing noses bump against each other they can't help but smile.


	48. itch

It starts with an itch.

It's an innocent itch, surely, one in the middle of Qilby's back that he can't  _quite_  reach so he flips around in the bath and murmurs for Chibi to get it. When he does, and Qilby makes a contented noise, Chibi decides to up the ante to a backrub.

"You're tense," Chibi says, since it isn't actually a lie, and he slides his hands up to Qilby's shoulders and squeezes. Qilby flops, makes a "mrrr" noise and arches against the side of the bath so Chibi can get to more of his back, and Chibi knows he has the bearded man exactly where he wants him.

"You found my weakness," he says, even though Chibi's known his weakness for years. In response, Chibi rolls his thumbs into a spot by Qilby's shoulder blades, and Qilby moans aloud and whispers directions to Chibi that the tanned prophet doesn't really need. At this point, when he rolls his knuckles into  _just the right spot_  and gets another of those sweet moans from Qilby's mouth, he's fairly confident in his backrub technique.

When Chibi stops and slides his fingers down the pale skin of Qilby's back, the scientist cheekily says "you missed a spot" and arches his back so his ass sticks out of the warm water. Chibi opts to  _bite it_ , and Qilby makes an entirely different noise between a snort and a groan as he realizes the other itch he didn't realize he had.

"Trying to start something in the bath, old man?" Chibi teases. It's only fair, with the amount of times Qilby's teased  _him_  for the same behavior.

"Precisely," Qilby says, and they're kissing not a second after.


	49. explode

The anger rises in his throat like bile, slow at first and it creeps up on him without him realizing. Chibi notices it at the table, sees it by the way his eyebrows begin to twitch and his hands fiddle with the notebook as though he wants to tear it, and so the prophet strokes at Qilby's other hand under the table; Qilby grips two of Chibi's fingers to dispel some of the nervous energy, but he doesn't feel it working.

Yugo keeps talking about where to direct their efforts, like he  _knows_  and Qilby can't stand a bit of it when he sees the  _kid_  making those same mistakes he's made every lifetime. Worse yet is that people are agreeing and he can't tell if it's because they actually agree or because Yugo holds that fleeting crown, that crown he wants for his own, that crown he would use for so much better things. He feels it rush up, he feels himself powerless to stop it—

"You're wrong!" he yells, his voice booms through the meeting hall, and Chibi finds himself grabbing Qilby's arm but it's shaken off, lost in a flurry of curses and slamming. Qilby's face is flushed in fury, and Yugo takes a swing across the table and Qilby dodges swiftly and reacts and it's all Chibi can do to yank him by the arms and drag him kicking and flailing.

Like a spent bomb, he's silent after Chibi pulls him out the door. "What the hell was that?" Chibi yells, and Qilby sighs. He's still coming down from his high.

"I couldn't help it."


	50. rise

When Yugo dies (Qilby doesn't feel as bad for quietly celebrating because he knows Yugo will be back) and appoints Chibi king, the prophet is somewhat bewildered by his position and goes to Qilby to ask  _what_ exactly he's supposed to do. Over tea they sit in the warmth of spring and talk, about all of Qilby's experience and where they're headed as a people.

"I guess I'm just not used to this sudden power I have," Chibi says. "First those  _dreams_ , and now this. I'm going to need your help for a while." Qilby perks, suddenly filled with interest at basically having the crown in his hands, and even though Chibi notices he doesn't comment.

"You'll rise to the role eventually, Chibi," Qilby says, with a self-assured beard stroke and a warm smile that makes his eyelids crinkle at the corners. "We all have. I've seen you enough times to know that besides me, you're the one best for the position." Chibi chuckles at Qilby's little display of arrogance, but emboldened by the prospect of being good at the job with Qilby to help him, relaxes.

"Well, my first order," he mutters cheekily as he brushes Qilby's hair out of his face and leans in, "is that you kiss me."

"Who died and made  _you_  king?" Qilby asks, and Chibi laughs and kicks him.


	51. crumble

Everything crumbles and turns to dust in time.

Architecture crumbles. The architecture they crafted together, that means lifetimes of work to him, crumbles and gets replaced by something new, and even though the new structure means just as much to him and holds just as much work it still punches him in the stomach to see his old work go. People crumble. The people that Qilby has forged friendships with, so that sometimes he almost forgets they'll die, they all crumble, and when they do it's not quite a surprise but always a biting shock, a slap in the face to any normalcy he might have wanted.

Qilby's sanity crumbles, but Chibi's dedicated a good chunk of his life to holding it together.

It's one of the duties the Goddess has tasked him, of course, to make sure Qilby doesn't lose it and can fulfill his own duty; but there's something else. It hurts seeing the man he loves, his partner, the person his Goddess crafted specifically to counterbalance him, and the man he tumbles into bed with most nights crumble in front of him. It hurts when he snaps, shouts at Chibi for things he doesn't even remember  _doing_ , screams about days he wishes  _he_  could just crumble into dust and disappear, suggests someone end this "fucked-up cycle" (as he puts it) and… leave Chibi behind?

That's something Chibi can't stand, so every time, he grasps Qilby tight and Qilby realizes what he's saying and falls to his knees and buries his head in Chibi's chest. Chibi holds him, sternly hisses "I'm never letting you go," and they embrace, these two lovers caught in a furious and desperate cycle.

Chibi doesn't want to think of a day when some part of him, even if it's just the knowledge that he'll come back, isn't around to keep Qilby balanced.


	52. range

The second time Chibi breaks his arm in combat, after it's all over and he's all bloody and bruised with his arm in a sling, he has to listen to Qilby chastising him about learning some ranged methods of combat. Considering he's bloody and bruised with his arm in a sling, he's not all that interested in listening and just mutters "yeah, yeah" when Qilby suggests they go out and do some archery.

Some weeks later, when he's all healed and Qilby actually  _does_  drag him out to the range, Chibi isn't amused, mostly because he was just working on a project and Eliatrope help him if someone takes him away from the workshop when he's in his zone.

"You know how to shape objects out of Wakfu; this shouldn't be so hard for you," Qilby chuckles at Chibi's fifth mangled arrow. "You're not getting the structural aspects right." On his next try he  _does_  get it right, and the grin of genuine pride Qilby gives reminds him that  _damn_  does he love Qilby teaching him, even if he is supposed to be the older one in this relationship.

The next step is trying to hit a target. That goes poorly enough that Qilby himself almost gets hit a few times, and when the bearded man protests Chibi just yells "yeah, that's what you get for hitting  _me_  in battle!" Qilby doesn't have a response to that except to keep trying to coach the inventor through.

In the end, Qilby has a mildly singed shoulder, and they decide it's for the best that Chibi just keep punching things.


	53. fight/flight

Qilby's seen a lot of things he wishes he could forget.

It's the kind of feeling that rises quickly before you even realize it's there, that feeling he feels when he remembers his people dying in droves before his eyes, and suddenly when he looks down he sees that blood all over his spindly hands. His blood runs cold, icy in his veins, and his pupils contract against the sunlight that's suddenly so bright it could blind; he feels his ears ringing more than he hears the speech of the council over the din of screams ringing in his head, and when Chibi touches his hand and whispers "are you okay?" he can't stay still. He springs to his feet, runs out of the room even as Mina yells after him, and he feels the vomit rising in his throat and falls to his knees on the grass before he can stop it.

He only realizes he's outside when he finds himself shaking against the damp grass with Chibi's calloused hands brushing his hair out of his face, his strong arms pulling him against his chest. "You're not okay," he whispers in Qilby's ear, and the scientist feels himself come down, wrapped in the understanding embrace of his partner.

"I just remembered something," he mutters. "I'll be fine."

"Do you want to talk about it?"

He can't. He won't. He could never tell him what he's done. "I'll be okay. Thanks."


	54. acid

The words Chibi spits are sulfuric acid; they sizzle against the edges of Qilby's consciousness and curl up the ends, eat at his brain for long after they're spread. Things like  _you're sick, you only think of yourself_ ; even with the full knowledge that Chibi doesn't mean them, that they're born of frustration and rage with the burden they both bear, they make him sick with doubt every time he swallows them. After all, what if he  _is_  selfish? What if he  _is_  only rationalizing his sickness?

The words Qilby spits are sodium hydroxide; they burn Chibi to the bone, stick there long after they've been washed away in the tides of his anger. He can't stand to be called a child, not with the responsibility he keeps on his shoulders, and every time Qilby accuses him of naiveté he screams out not just from frustration with those sick words but with the thought in the back of his head that maybe he  _is_  a child. What if he  _doesn't_  really know? What if he  _will_  never understand Qilby the way he yearns to, the way Qilby yearns to be understood?

It's only after the fights that they balance, the way acids and bases do, and the salty water from the combination emits itself in the tears that wash away their doubts.


	55. color

The world is grey for him sometimes – or perhaps it's more accurate to say he doesn't appreciate the colors he sees. Even the most beautiful sight dulls when you've seen it so many times. With age he's lost the vibrance of his own planet, and even with the tiny discoveries he makes every day he can't be satisfied. He has no time to waste on something age-worn with a barely-visible shine.

_It is the most beautiful flower in the field he wants._

With gentle and precise fingers Chibi weaves the first flower – a fittingly regal purple - into his beard, works the hair aside and slips the stem in so that the blossom nestles next to his chin. He takes the next – bright red – and works it around the first, and Qilby sighs in contentment; he's always liked his hair being played with, wherever it is on his body. While Chibi works Qilby takes the time to study his face; the focused dark eyes, the tongue slightly peeking out from the side of his mouth, the scruffy white stubble on his jaw, they're all so old and yet so new to him.

The last flower Chibi has is a red rose, with its thorns carefully shaved off. He tucks it between his hair and his hat and smiles. "We're matched."

Yes, Chibi is positively radiant, with all the colors of the Krosmosz.


	56. give

Far from gifts or even lives, the best gift they give each other is sanity.

It's as though they draw from the same pool, in fact, a finite and precious resource they often need to tap. It's not quite the Wakfu they steal from the planets they visit, or even the Wakfu that they spill into each other sometimes, but an entirely different beast; it's a drug that one needs to live. They pool what they have into the same, and they try and try not to take too much.

When Qilby and Chibi become stressed beyond their limit at the same time, it's an awful experience for the entire council, so they try to make sure that doesn't happen by way of forced holidays. As Chibi repeatedly finds out, and as Qilby doesn't like to admit, they generally don't know how much they need a break until Mina kicks them out on their ass.

"I'm perfectly capable," Chibi grumbles. "I am completely and utterly capable of working on legislation right now. You can't blame me for being a little snippy when people are bitching at me all day and—"

"Go to sleep." Qilby's starting to get twitchy at Chibi's rant, so he presses the side of Chibi's head and forces his cheek into the pillow.

"Don't wanna go to sleep… mmmm…" Not three seconds after, he's asleep. Qilby snorts, mutters something like 'just like a child,' and curls up around him.


	57. needle

"It's just a needle," Qilby says.

Chibi whimpers.

"Would you rather be immunized or actually get the disease, Chibi?"

Chibi grimaces. He doesn't want to get sick,  _but._

"You are twenty-five years old, not five, and I've seen you with a javelin through your arm. I think you can handle this." Qilby's starting to get visibly annoyed, and he's twiddling the vial in his fingers so he doesn't break it. Chibi, meanwhile, widens his eyes, and then starts to stroke his chin.

"Dear goddess, when did I have a  _javelin_  in my arm? That's terrifying—" Jab. "Ow, fuck, you could have warned me!" Qilby is wiping at the mark with an alcohol-soaked cloth, and Chibi hisses at the cold on his arm.

"You would have run away,  _milady._ " The bearded young man goes to retrieve the bandages with a smirk, and Chibi pouts on the chair.

" _That hurt more than the needle!"_ Qilby wraps the bandage once around Chibi's arm, ties it, and lets his shoulders drop as he gets out of doctor-mode.

"What, are you so sore that you want me to kiss it better?" he asks.

"That's not actually a bad idea," Chibi says. Qilby can't help but roll his eyes, but he complies, bending over and kissing where the bandage crosses the pierced flesh. "Ah, I feel better already."

"I'm sure you do."

"No, seriously, when did I have a javelin through my arm?" Qilby snorts and straightens again, and Chibi prepares himself for a story.


	58. locks

He locks the door, stares out the window, and thinks.

On the screen in his mind he plays his memories, takes them from the beginning he barely grasps to the moment he knew something had to change, to the now on a new planet and a new (yet so old) atmosphere. He's been so damnably stressed lately, so strung out, and he pretends he doesn't know why but he knows. There's only one person who understands, and he'll never  _understand_  if he keeps  _forgetting._

Somewhere in his consciousness he hears clicking. Slower, then faster, more insistent until it's his focus, until all he can hear is the clicks of something – what? – in the distance. He sees everything, the unimaginable infinity, and he blinks into it unseeingly.

Then the clicking stops and he's clear and it's all empty.

Not two seconds later, but it feels like the longest of eternities, he feels a tap on his shoulder, sees a hand he recognizes flash in his vision a few times.

"How did you get in here?" He wanted to be alone. Did he? He doesn't know now.

"I picked the lock, genius. What the hell is with you lately?" Chibi's there. He knows by the voice, knew the second he saw the hand in front of his eyes, but he doesn't register it until the older inventor is wrapping his arms around him and resting his chin on his shoulder. "I'm worried, you know?"

It's normal. It's normal, he'll be better in the morning, except he won't because it's another day trapped on this planet, trapped in the hamster wheel, running after something he's not sure he'll ever reach. "Yeah."


	59. slope

Qilby's body, to Chibi, is like the most beautiful and precisely constructed graph.

He could spend so many hours studying, learning the slope of each point until he could tell you everything about it, everything about the dip in his shoulders or the way his toes curl in precise mathematical terms. He could tell you the average frequency of the tiniest involuntary muscle twitch, the pressure between his eyelids when Chibi does  _just_  the right thing and he shuts his eyes tight and moans aloud. Even with the probabilistic element thrown in it's just a formula, after all, a stunning and perfect formula, created by the Goddess for this one person he loves.

Qilby doesn't believe him when he says math is the purest of sciences; he holds minor interest when Chibi points out fractal structure in plants, or the golden spiral in a seashell, but he can't really grasp the way it permeates  _everything_ , the very flow of Wakfu itself and not just electromagnetic waves. He doesn't get it, the way everything works in a way you can dictate from probability and from formulae, and the way that's almost in itself divine.

More for him to appreciate, he guesses. Even with the frustrating little parts, he loves that damn set of formulae, and every time he can get closer to it and study the graph of its bounds he feels blessed.


	60. correspondence

Sometimes Qilby wishes Chibi's Eliacube (or hell, the entire Wik-Fi network!) had a built-in blood alcohol detector, because much as he misses Chibi when he's out, he is  _not_  interested in the ramblings of a drunken prophet.

"You need to go to sleep, Chibi," he says, like he's talking to a child, and he swears he can  _see_  Chibi getting offended on the other end.

"I'm not drunk! I call you all lonely and you tell me to go to sleep! You don't miss me at all!" Qilby's almost convinced – wait, no, he isn't, because Chibi's slurring in that way he does when he's had one too many.

"Yeah, as though I'll fall for that. How many pints did you have?"

"Uh…" He's  _counting._

"You're drunk and I'm trying to work. Go to bed." At the sound of Chibi's huff, he adds, "I'll talk to you in the morning."

"Eesh, what a buzzkill. I was thinking about this thing, though, this thing that we should make…" and he goes on for about two minutes about something way too complicated to feasibly exist. Qilby listens for the first thirty seconds, which he assumes were devised in that sweet spot of blood alcohol concentration where Chibi reaches new levels of genius, before it all dissolves into a pool of No Way.

"That doesn't even make sense, Chibi."

"What are you talking about? Yes, it does! See, like this…"

"No. Go to bed."

"Buzzkill." After Chibi clicks off and the flowers stop rustling, Qilby can't help but smile.

 


	61. linger

Chibi left his hat.

Out of the corner of his sleepy mind, he wonders how in the  _hell_  an Eliatrope can just leave their hat somewhere. Then again, Chibi's never been the most conventional of Eliatropes – that is, when he's not leading them – but his  _hat_? That's like leaving your pants somewhere, which Chibi in his sleepy stupor probably  _would_  have left had Qilby not at least  _tried_  to make sure Chibi was fully dressed.

The sun's low in the sky, and the first signs of light are peeking into Qilby's room. Caught in the awkward transition from adolescence to adulthood, they spend their nights like this, embracing and kissing until Chibi finally pulls away to his workshop. Some nights, they linger longer, fall asleep without quite realizing and wake up at noon terribly late but satiated.

Tonight isn't one of those nights, but Chibi's scent lingers on his hat, and Qilby curls around it the same way he would around Chibi himself. It's soft and a little fuzzy with the constant wear it gets, and there are a couple of small patches and parts where it's sewn back together. It's a resilient thing, a lot like Chibi himself, and Qilby smiles with the little piece of Chibi he has just to him, just for this moment.

Before long he's fallen asleep, cuddling the fluffy hat in his arms.


	62. charm

"Hey, check this out." When Chibi pulls a piece of scrap metal out of his pocket, curled and slightly burned at the ends, Qilby doesn't quite know what to think.

"What am I looking at?" Really, he doesn't know. It's not particularly shiny, and it doesn't have an interesting color. The only thing remotely interesting about it is the way it curls at the ends.

"Doesn't it look like a flower?" Chibi asks. "It reminded me of you." Indeed, when Qilby looks, it looks almost like a rose petal; the tinge of orangey-red only adds to the feeling he gets that he's holding a delicate piece of nature, but it's offset by the hardiness of the metal.

"Hmm, it does look like a petal," he says, and smiles. "May I keep it?"

"I was going to give it to you." From then on, the petal becomes a good luck charm, even though Qilby knows the notion of luck is logically stupid. It reminds him of Chibi every time he touches it in his pocket, even when Chibi is miles away, and he can't help but smile.

When he finds himself in the middle of another war, when Orgonax's wrath rages and Yugo is about to blast him to his fate, he reaches for the petal he's so carefully guarded over so many lifetimes.

It's gone.


	63. roads

Even being around Qilby and Chibi for a mere few minutes, one can tell that they tend to disregard borders like roads.

Roads are beaten paths, too worn by the feet of travelers before, too many sights that have been seen too many times. They're not inspiring; neither of them really finds  _people_ inspiring. Really, sometimes they just want to go and explore, see how the flora have evolved since their last trip through the area, and get lost in the wilderness for a while.

Of course, such romanticism would be a lot more practical if Chibi could read a damn map.

" _And_  I think it is time to take our lunch break," the prophet declares in the middle of a thick forest, and Qilby is glad he knows where they are – sort of - because Chibi sure as hell doesn't. There are no landmarks here that haven't been irrevocably marked by the turning tides of nature, and it's been so many years since Qilby's been through here that he's trying his best to retrace his steps in his head.

At least if he's lost he doesn't have to answer to the whims of the council. For now, at least, all he has is the chirping of birds and Chibi's sheepish smile, and he's pleased with that just for now.


	64. hunger

Qilby is a man who hungers.

He hungers for new experiences, for new sights and tastes and new books and for the wind in his beard. He hungers for skin on skin, for the firm grasp of Chibi's hands on his shoulders, the taste of his neck tinged with sweat and the slightest hint of blood. He never stops wanting more, and his curiosity is never eased.

"What are you, a damn vampire?" Chibi asks after a particularly hard bite on his neck, one that draws blood to the surface. Qilby can tell he's not really annoyed (maybe just a bit because the bearded man intends on teasing) and laughs.

"I actually prefer stronger tastes," Qilby replies. Like the time he took the dregs of a container of heavy cream and licked it off Chibi's stomach and hips – what an adventure that had been, the sweet of the cream mixing with the salty of sweat and the headiness of the image it invoked in his head. "Your skin, however, is perfectly acceptable." He continues to bite, incisors digging into the tan skin of Chibi's collarbone.

"Not surprising, considering you dump cayenne pepper in everything," Chibi retorts; it's cloaked in gasped and shuddering breaths. "Do we not feed you enough, old man?"

" _You_  don't feed me enough," Qilby growls, "and I'm getting my fill." When he suddenly slides down and starts unbuttoning Chibi's pants, the inventor decides this is a hunger he can live with.


	65. reciprocity

They give, they take. They breathe air, Wakfu, inspiration, the very soul of one another, and they give it back in turn, like the trees take in what they breathe out.

"I've missed you terribly," Qilby whispers into Chibi's shoulder, and Chibi can't share  _that_  sentiment – he's sixteen, and he's just confessed his yearnings and gotten an "I was waiting for this" in return; what is he really supposed to think? It's not like that's normal, it's not like any of his life is normal, and all he can do is go with it and reciprocate the best he can.

It's completely unspoken when they kiss, their intent conveyed in the mutual understanding of five hundred thousand years, and  _damn_  if Qilby isn't a great kisser. Chibi doesn't quite know how to logically explain the happiness that springs from his heart; he  _knows_  it's more than hormones, but there's no other explanation, so he turns to his Goddess when he lies in bed that night with Qilby snoring beside him.

"If this is my gift for serving you, I thank you with my whole heart, and I promise to pay it back in full," he prays to her. In the back of his head, he swears he hears her laugh.

_It's more a duty I've given you._  Someday, Chibi will understand, but for now he kisses Qilby on the chin, a simple reciprocation of the soft cheek-kisses Qilby's given him.

 


	66. kind

Chibi has one of the kindest souls Qilby's ever met.

Yugo says it's a damn miracle the prophet puts up with Qilby at all, though granted, Yugo and Qilby never got along. Chibi himself says Qilby is completely insufferable sometimes, yet he still stays faithfully by the bearded man's side even when they're sick with anger at one another. It's ridiculous, this fitful relationship they have, but even if it's just out of that special kind of kindness called "love" it makes Qilby happy.

Some days, Chibi sits outside and feeds Piwis leftover bread. Qilby rolls his eyes and asks why Chibi's interfering with the ecosystem, but Chibi just looks at him and asks, "Aren't we part of the ecosystem too?"

Shit, he'd never thought of it that way. He never sat and thought on the logical merits of kindness, or of the idea that Eliatropes and dragons were anything but isolated, observers who affect the ecosystem from outside. As a scientist, he knows he really should realize they're just animals who want to help their fellow animals survive and breed.

"Remember, we're not just observers, we're part of this world too," Chibi says, then smiles and pats the ground next to him. "Come on, sit down with me."

From then on, his heart flutters when he sees Chibi feeding the birds.


	67. fruity

Qilby can't decide what he likes better: the flowers or the fruit that comes after them.

The flowers surround him with color in days he feels like there's none, and Chibi's enthrallment with their structure makes Qilby smile. They're interesting little things, that Eliatropes use to communicate as well as to appreciate, and they're delicate in a way he can appreciate.

The fruit is delicious and Yugo, much as it pains Qilby to admit, does make delicious pie. That's really all he needs.

There's a tiny gap, though, in which he can enjoy the flowers of some trees and the fruits of others; it's one of his favorite times of year, when the gentle chill of spring wraps around his shoulders and Chibi comes out of his winter workshop-hole to enjoy the sunlight. They relax, enjoy a minute of sweet solitude in the light, and when Chibi starts braiding Qilby's beard with a mouthful of apple the scientist soaks in the atmosphere.

Too often they're angry, at war, be it with themselves or the rest of the Krosmosz, and too often it feels like a sick cycle where moments sweet as peaches are far eclipsed by the rage and stress that fills them. With the flowers surrounding them, the taste of spring's fruits in their kisses, though, those thoughts retreat for a moment fleeting like the flowers.


	68. half-life

"How old is this thing, anyway?"

"Do you expect me to remember the exact age of any artifact you might find?"

"I do, actually."

Qilby clicks his tongue and pinches the bridge of his nose. He remembers, but Chibi's questions are getting annoying, considering he doesn't remember to as many significant figures as Chibi seems to want.

"It's ten thousand years, give or take."

"Give or take  _what_? You're a scientist; you know I need more than that." Chibi sighs deeply, and Qilby almost feels bad.

"Then carbon date it yourself." He hands the rusty thing of gears back to Chibi, and the prophet ignores the suggestion, because he's a  _busy man_  and doesn't have  _time_  to do the dating, not when he's got a goddess-gifted font of knowledge sitting right in front of him. "You act as though I'm supposed to remember everything in exact dates."

"I wouldn't be surprised if you're just holding it from me because you think it's funny." The words are piercing, like an arrow through the soul, mostly because Qilby  _does_  do that and it stings to have that trust withheld.

"Chibi, I'm  _not_."

"You know everything every other time you speak." Chibi scowls and goes back to his work, and Qilby settles his chin on his hand and sighs. It is a boiling hot summer day, and they snipe at each other in the sun.


	69. a comedy of errors

"I didn't know there was a hornets' nest there!"

"I know!"

" _Then stop looking at me like that!"_  Both Qilby and Chibi are all too aware they shouldn't be wasting breath on yelling at each other, not with how fast they're running and the way their joints creak, but they really don't care in their scramble to shift the blame for the hornet swarm chasing after them. Qilby shoots Chibi another glare, and Chibi rolls his eyes in return.

"I can't keep this up," Qilby draws in a gasping breath, "much longer, you know!"

" _Fine, then, old man!_ " And Chibi, with a swift motion, grabs Qilby by the waist and flings him over his shoulder. Their pace slows with the weight of Qilby's body on Chibi's back, and the hornets are catching up swiftly, but they're  _so close_  to shelter and—

And Qilby's kicking at Chibi's sides trying to get himself down. "I will throw you back on the ground and let them sting you to bits, I swear to it," Chibi growls, but Qilby knows it's an empty threat, and he's still insulted by being carried like a woman. Chibi hisses as one hornet stings him in the shoulder, then one in the arm and it hurts like hell but he's right there and the door is  _so_  close.

They tumble into the inn, slam the door behind them, and Chibi unceremoniously dumps a sputtering Qilby onto the floor. When the bearded man hits his elbow on the way down, Chibi can have no sympathy as he rubs the stings and winces.

Naturally, after he's well over the blows to his elbow and his pride, Qilby tends to Chibi's wounds in apology.


	70. tragedy

He touches her jaw with the back of his hand, feels the warmth of recent life, but she doesn't answer.

"Shinonome!  _Answer me!_ "

He doesn't know how he'll survive more time without her in this damn stagnant world that rips at him like the tears in soldiers' skin. He doesn't understand why she had to die like this, in this war, when she's far too young and she's supposed to outlast him because that's what always happens—

"Qilby, she's gone." Chibi is behind him, but Qilby only barely notices; he pinches Shinonome once, then twice, and it takes Chibi dropping to his knees and putting his hand on Qilby's shoulder for him to whip around.

"She's gone," he repeats. Qilby knows she'll come back, that they'll be born again together, but the years he must live without her feel impossibly long now when he looks at her peaceful face, and the tears start to come even when he doesn't want them to. The sickly red sky, the screams he hears, none of it is worth it to him now, not when he's without the one person closest to his heart—

"Qilby." Chibi whispers it, looks down at the breaking man on the ground, and pulls him up under his shoulders to let Qilby's head rest in the crook of his shoulder. Chibi kisses his hat, rests his forehead on Qilby's, and lets the man mourn in the safe haven of his arms.


	71. hope is the thing with feathers

"Hello, tofu doctor." Chibi walks into Qilby's study and can't help but laugh at the tiny tofu lying on a book and the sight of Qilby carefully bandaging its wing. "I thought you were the wise one who said not to tamper with the ecosystem's natural regulation."

"There's a difference between alleviating suffering and inhibiting the necessity of death, Chibi." Qilby doesn't look up from his task for a second; his hands work at the same pace, deftly wrapping bandages around the tiny appendage. It tries to flap its wings and chirp a bit, but Qilby holds it down and whispers something to it that makes it calm down.

"You are never allowed to make fun of me for talking to tofus again." Chibi comes closer to inspect the tiny creature. It's small, weak like his own damaged soul, and he can't help but empathize; he guesses Qilby feels the same way, from the way he keeps whispering gentle words to the tiny feathered thing.

"I still will, because you're a lot more excited about it." Qilby turns from Chibi to the tofu, which is trying to fly away. "Now, little one, you can't go off so quickly. I still have to put antibiotic on you." He squeezes a bit of gel onto his fingers. Chibi smiles.


	72. empire

He's seen empires rise and fall, steady as the rain pattering on his windowpane, and like the raindrops one by one they slip through his grasp. Qilby lies awake next to a softly snoring king and thinks.

The crown rests heavily on Chibi's head, he knows; he can tell from the fitful sleep he gets, the way he tosses and murmurs. Yet, Qilby can't help but wonder if it would be too much to hold that crown again, just once, after ten thousand dull years watching their mistakes on repeat.

Chibi jolts awake, shakes Qilby's arm that's resting around him with the force of his jerking limbs, and Qilby blinks out of half-sleep. The white-haired king is in a panic, a cold sweat, and reaches for Qilby's face until Qilby's steady hand stops his.

"Where's Grougal?" he asks.

"Grougaloragran is outside. You had a nightmare. Go back to sleep." Qilby curls around Chibi, wraps the man in his embrace and Chibi sighs and lets the adrenaline drain out of his body. The dream brought too much to the forefront of his mind, though, for him to sleep.

The weight of an empire is too much for one to bear alone, but Chibi shares the burden well enough; yet, it still makes Qilby sick to his stomach to be in the shadows.


	73. turpentine kisses and mistaken blows

"I cannot  _believe_  you would dare say that to my face!" They're arguing again.

"Ah, that's rich, coming from someone who called me a petulant teenager!"

" _I have never called you that!"_ Chibi snaps, snarls his words, because he's convinced Qilby is lying. He can't remember saying anything like that, and he knows that forty-six isn't  _that_ old to forget what he has and hasn't said. His face is bright red, as is Qilby's, and they look each other dead in the eye.

"Oh, what, are you going senile? Or do you have selective memory?" Qilby rolls his eyes and feels his face twist in a sick grin.

" _When did I say that to you?_ " He's insistent, and it hits Qilby like a freight train all at once. Chibi did call him a petulant teenager, but that was two hundred years ago.

Chibi doesn't remember. He's yelling at Chibi for something that, from his standpoint, he never did. His shoulders slump and the fight drains from his face.

"You're right. You didn't." Chibi's still raving mad, but Qilby just sighs. "I'm sorry, Chibi."

"Oh, because you can't remember, you resign yourself, because you  _made it from whole cloth_ , Qilby!"

"I didn't—" Qilby starts to say, but cuts himself off. He knows Chibi won't understand. "I'll explain later." With resignation he walks away


	74. rings

There was a time they both wore rings.

They got lost somewhere in the scuffle of lives, went missing so long ago that Qilby barely even remembers them. When he's digging through boxes of journals and finds two steel circles, though, he smiles.

"Chibi, look what I found," Qilby yells, waving his closed hand with a smile Chibi hasn't seen in months.

"Oh, something special?" Chibi perks up from the table and grins. "Looks like it."

"Remember when we used to wear rings?" That's a silly question – Chibi obviously doesn't – but he feels like asking anyway. Without waiting for an answer, he opens his hand to reveal the rings, and Chibi chuckles.

"No, I don't, but this one-" he points to the one with a gold inset – "looks like something I'd wear." And he plucks it out of Qilby's hand and starts to put it on.

"Ah, ah, let me put it on—" It's already on; they never were ones for sentimentality, but when Qilby finds his old ring, something that reminds him of their long and varied history, he's inclined to try it out for a change. Chibi snorts and takes the other ring.

"Yeah, this looks like something I'd make. Hold out your hand."


	75. dust

Chibi starts coughing and hacking the minute Qilby starts pulling out boxes. Clouds of dust form in a room that should be big enough to dissipate them, but Qilby knows well enough to cover his face with his sleeve when he comes in here. It's only after a solid minute of hard coughing that Chibi thinks to follow suit, and even then he still sneezes into his arm.

Qilby's been here enough – practically constructed this library, after all – that he knows exactly where every old book is, so he goes directly to where he put the files he's looking for and yanks a folder.

"How did you know where this is?" Chibi sneezes again. "You didn't even look at the catalog."

"I wrote the catalog, you know," Qilby says, like it's nothing. "You don't know how much time I've spent in here over the years, and to be honest, I'm not sure you  _want_  to."

"You're so ancient  _you're_  dusty." Chibi laughs good-naturedly and starts brushing at Qilby's face. Qilby knocks the hand away.

"You're so new you're green, then!" With a reverent touch Qilby pushes the box of files back into its place. "Truly, though, I'm sure you'll get the hang of having the crown eventually…"


	76. every you, every me

There are tiny, tiny changes Qilby notices in Chibi from lifetime to lifetime.

Some years, when their planet is peaceful and he doesn't have to toss and turn at night, Chibi is more carefree. He'll drag Qilby out in the dead of night to go stargazing or spend all day in his shop inventing silly, useless gadgets. He looks inspired, has color to his face, and Qilby drinks in his energy.

Other times Chibi can't turn his mind off, can't stop thinking about the fate of his kingdom even to sleep, and those are the times he gets more of those prophetic dreams that make him wake up in the middle of the night in a sweat. When he springs out of the bed to rush off, to go write something down or go work in the shop, Qilby can't help but worry a bit even though he knows Chibi's resilient.

Qilby changes, too, like the first time he saw war, or when he decided to start keeping secrets. He's different by the year, more jaded, more arrogant; yet Chibi can still calm him down, make him relax just that tiny bit. The most difficult times are when they're both overly serious and on edge, but though it's tough, they make it through.

Each man they were, are, and will be, though, tends to blend into the other like it's natural. Qilby yearns to have that connection back again.


	77. project

The Zaap is one of the biggest undertakings they've ever had to deal with, and it shows.

First, they have to figure out the underpinnings of the system; portals are easy, but linking a whole network together is a bit harder, especially when you want control over where you pop out. That last part is difficult, though, so Chibi usually ends up halfway across an island before he can properly vocalize what's going on.

Second, they have to construct the Zaaps themselves. This involves a lot of travel and a lot of hard labor. Usually, they get people to help with it, but sometimes they end up lugging giant bricks from a tiny mine cart and stacking them themselves, and they're  _tired_  by the end of those days _._

Third, they need to debug the system, which is a mess all around because they can't figure out why Chibi is moving this many miles when he should be moving a few feet. Eventually they just tumble into the Zaap after a few tweaks and it  _works_  and they don't understand why but they roll with it.

By the end of it, when they have a working system that people can use without getting lost in the middle of the desert, they spend two days cuddled up in bed doing nothing but talking, making love, and sleeping. The rest of the council doesn't ask where they went.


	78. adore

Chibi's always amazed by the way Qilby looks at him.

There are times, when they've been apart for too long and it eats at their hearts, that Qilby will come up behind a Chibi arms-deep in paperwork and just put his arms around the tired man's shoulders. Chibi can't help but smile, turn around and rest their heads together, and Qilby will just take a deep and longing look at him.

Goddess, that smile in those moments could make Chibi the happiest man in the Krosmoz for years.

"Ten thousand years," Qilby whispers against Chibi's lips, and his beard tickles Chibi's chin. "It was a trial, to be sure." The way he brushes their faces together, the way he looks at Chibi as if – in this tiny moment – he's the only Eliatrope that exists, tells Chibi all he needs to know.

"I can well imagine," Chibi says. His smile mirrors Qilby's, and when they kiss again it's as easy as breathing, and they can't help but keep their eyes open just to get in more fleeting looks at the other's eyes.

Shinonome walks into the room, intending to ask for something or other, but when she sees the two she smiles. Her brother had the same goofy grin on his face when he found her again, after all. With as little sound as she can make she tiptoes away and leaves the two to their own devices.


	79. murmur

Qilby can't count how many treasured conversations happen in sleepy murmurs.

He figures that part of it is the atmosphere; there's something about settling down to bed with Chibi after a long night of work, when the sun's just starting to rise, and spending hours talking before they finally sleep. Chibi's more apt to divulge the tiny things about his life he wouldn't ordinarily think worth sharing, too, and Qilby takes pride in knowing  _everything_ there is to know about him.

"I think I'm starting to get sick," Chibi mutters after a sneeze. "How am I supposed to handle this, anyway? I've never been sick."

"Yes, you have, you just can't remember it," Qilby says, and curls around Chibi as if to warm him up. "Feel free to attribute your good health to what a good doctor I am."

"So what about this, then? You must be  _slacking._ " Chibi chuckles, and then coughs again. Instinctively, his head nuzzles into Qilby's shoulder.

"No, you're just working too hard." Qilby fondly strokes Chibi's hair under his hat. "Stress does strange things to the Eliatrope body, you see. And the dragon body, for that matter – Grougaloragran is probably sick as well."

"Shit, so Mina was right."

"Mina's usually right, you realize."

Chibi doesn't want to admit it, so he changes the subject. "What if you get sick taking care of me?"

"Then I get sick and you get to nurse me back to health."

"Like you'd let me." They share a quiet laugh burrowed under blankets.


	80. above

_Cheer the King._

He remembers, in the back of his head, what someone told him when he was a child;  _the King guards over all the Eliatropes on this planet._  He couldn't care less, because all he wants right now is  _Qilby._  One of his hands twists against the wood of the chair sitting tall at the end of the meeting tall, and the other clutches into the small of Qilby's back.

"Mine," he growls lowly. "Every inch of you is mine. This," he traces Qilby's spine with his nails, "this," he lets go of the chair to grasp Qilby's dripping cock, "and especially this." When Chibi bucks his hips up, shoves further into Qilby, it takes every inch of self-control the bearded man has not to throw his head back, to keep staring with those golden eyes right into Chibi's face.

Qilby's the only one who can stand up to him, in these private moments, and Chibi  _loves_  it.

"Say it." Chibi latches onto Qilby's ear, bites it hard enough to bruise.

"You want me to say it,  _highness_?" Qilby's mocking even through his gasps and low groans, and even he doesn't know where he gets the self-control to keep saying these things but he runs with it anyway. "You'll have to make me scream it, then."


	81. below

_Cheer the King._

Qilby's always been loath to buy into the power hierarchy given to him, and he likes finding ways to turn it on its head. There's no secret that Qilby likes control, he  _loves_  it, and there's nothing more satisfying than breaking the crown with his own hands.

When he has Chibi pinned below him, squirming and grunting with his hands tied above his head, the king is  _his_  to command.

"Show your face." Chibi tries to bury the side of his face in the pillow, but Qilby grabs his chin and yanks it up. "Show me how much you like this." The prophet can't help moaning aloud at that, at displaying himself so lewdly, at being left without even his hat tied on the bed; yet he still challenges, still stares Qilby straight in the eyes with that look that says _I'm in control here._

"You think you'll get the best of me, eh, Qilby?" Chibi grins, though his eyes are half-lidded and twitch closed when two slick fingers push into him. As if to assert dominance, Qilby leaves a hard bite on Chibi's throat. "Hey, ah, not where people can see it—"

"I'll mark my territory where I please." Qilby's voice is husky, and when he slicks himself his features twist into a pleasured grin. "I'll make you scream it to the world if I have to. You're _mine._ "


	82. incalculable

“Everything is calculable.”

“Then what of your goddess?”

Their banter is suddenly tense, as is the air around them, and Chibi twitches. This isn’t a topic he likes discussing, much less with Qilby; his relationship with the Goddess is a personal matter, something that he doesn’t take too kindly to Qilby questioning whenever he can get a dig in.

“I have seen her. For someone who puts so much emphasis on empiricism, you should at least accept what’s observed.”

“For all your ideas of her, you can never seem to mark her as tangible.” Qilby raises an eyebrow, sips his drink, and Chibi puts his head in his hands.

“What, do you not trust me when I tell you of my encounters? Do you not trust me when you see me toss and turn with these dreams I have?” Chibi’s upset, and Qilby sighs. He hates when Chibi gets like this and he has to hedge his words; he spends the rest of his life doing that. For once, it would be nice to get away from carefully-chosen speech.

“That’s not it, Chibi. I do trust you. It’s just that I can’t be beholden to something I can’t see.”


	83. wire

Qilby walks into Chibi’s workshop to find the prophet elbow-deep in wires.

“Might I ask what the hell you’re doing?” For one, Chibi’s sitting on the floor, because whatever he’s working on won’t fit on his bench. For two, it’s a complete mess. For three,  _Chibi_  looks like a complete mess; his hair is all over the place, and he’s not even wearing his hat - or a shirt, for that matter.

“Take off your shirt; you know how temperamental electrical things get around fabric.” Qilby snorts and complies, then leans against the wall though it’s cold against his skin.

“So you’re finally trying to get something to work without the aid of Wakfu? Interesting, but is it feasible?”

“We’ll see.” Chibi looks up at Qilby in brief flickers, but most of his attention is centered on the tangle before him. His deft fingers work quickly, twisting and pushing, and Qilby can’t help but admire his hands until they get obscured by wires.

“We really won’t see if you don’t clean it up a little bit!” Qilby laughs, eyes full of fondness, and Chibi sticks out his tongue.

“If it’s hard to make, it should be hard to understand.” It’s only now that he seems to register that Qilby’s here; he smiles and looks up. “Hi, Qilby.”

“Hello, Chibi.”


	84. landslide

“This is ridiculous. It’s as though the hill just gave up.” Chibi scowls at the mess of dirt and rock before him, displeased at the amount of notes he has to take on the damage.

“That’s to be expected after an earthquake. I’m not sure this slope was stable to begin with.” Qilby strokes his beard in interest. “It appears the ground here’s loose enough for me to go through now.”

“You’re not the one who has to clean this up. That landslide just displaced half a village.” It did; those without homes are scattered around in tents, and Chibi furrows his brow at Qilby’s seeming disinterest. This is  _his_  kingdom, too, after all.

“Well, the crown rests heavy on the head. I thought we agreed you would allow me to pick through this area for fossils—“ Chibi is suddenly in Qilby’s face with his pointer finger pressed directly to the other man’s forehead.

“We  _agreed_  that if you got to pick through this area, you’d help me set up the relocation plans. That’s why we’re out here, genius.” Chibi sighs and keeps taking notes about the area.

He can’t lie, though; he enjoys the way Qilby looks all rugged and sweaty after a day’s digging.


	85. the beginning is the end is the beginning

Death is not the end.

It still pains him to see Chibi’s eyes shut, to see his Wakfu slowly drain from his body and ascend towards the sky, because he knows with that his memories leave him. Chibi’s memories of this world, their travels, of  _him_  – they all scatter like seeds on the gentle wind and Qilby’s left to pick them back up.

“Keep my memories safe,” Chibi whispers to him in the last breaths of life, before the last of his Wakfu slips away from his body and he relaxes altogether.

It’s only many years later, when they find themselves teenagers again, that Qilby grasps Chibi tight again, and it’s like returning home. He’s told Chibi, by now, of his ‘gift,’ so his murmured “I missed you so terribly” isn’t much out of place. They embrace and kiss by the ocean for what seems like hours, and when they finally pull away and continue walking along the shoreline they laugh.

 _I kept your memories safe, like you asked._  Qilby doesn’t say it aloud, but thinks it, knows exactly where he has those moments locked away in his head. But every now and then, Chibi will say something that strikes Qilby straight in the heart, reminds him  _he really doesn’t remember._

“You’re growing your beard out,” Chibi says. “I like it. Keep it.” Qilby doesn’t know whether he wants to laugh or cry.


	86. door

The door is locked. Chibi sighs.

“You need to eat sometime, you know.” No answer, but he knows Qilby’s in there. “Look, it’s been three days. I don’t know what you’re pissed about, but you can’t stay in there forever.” No answer. He can almost  _see_  Qilby trying to ignore him. “I give you ten seconds before I knock down the door.”

It’s then that Qilby answers the door. He looks gaunt, more than usual; dark circles are under his eyes, and he’s struggling to keep them open. Chibi edges himself between the door and the frame, and though Qilby tries to push him out he slips easily into the room.

“Who said you could let yourself into my study as you please?” Qilby grumbles, and opens his book again. He obviously wants to push Chibi out, but he knows his arms aren’t strong enough right now. Chibi sparks, grabs Qilby by the beard, and snarls each world as if it’s its own sentence.

“I will not let you be  _alone._ ” His eyes stare into the scientist’s, and Qilby realizes that he’s not going anywhere, so he drops to his knees and wraps an exhausted arm around Chibi’s waist.

“Fair enough.”


	87. enemy gate

Some days Chibi doesn’t know if Qilby is his friend or his enemy.

There are those precious days they spend together, in a gentle harmony, talking about projects and the universe’s tiny cogs. They bounce ideas off one another, knock them down just as easily, and their minds mesh until they can’t tell whose is whose anymore. They settle into each other, become the unit they’re used to, and they’re comfortable with that.

Then there are the days they can’t even look each other in the eye for wanting to scream in each other’s faces, and those are the toughest. Two men with strong will are worse when they clash. They fume quietly, fight for power around one another, and when they find each other in the mess they yell until their voices are hoarse and someone has to drag them apart. In the worst moments, fists connect with faces and stomachs until they lie bruised and neither of the men has fight in him anymore. The cycle starts again that way, they find balance, but some nights Chibi’s not quite satisfied.

Qilby’s mind is gated off, and Chibi tries and tries to bomb down that gate; but, at some point, one must accept that there are barriers insurmountable.


	88. stone

Chibi is stone-faced and stone-willed when it comes to this.

“Stop being a petulant child,” he says, eyes fixed hard on Qilby, making sure the message gets right into his head. He knows it won’t; Qilby seems to be able to thicken his skull at will. “Stasis is not something to be played with.”

“Oh, where do  _you_  get off calling me a  _child_? I have so many years of experience on you it’s sickening. I’m trying to do what’s best for our planet, not preserving my power.” Qilby glares and clenches his fists.

“And I highly doubt you know what you’re trying to control. Qilby, I know _exactly_  how you are.” Chibi doesn’t budge a bit.

“Do you not trust me? All these years of saying you trusted me completely, and now it’s taken back when I do something you don’t  _approve_  of?!”

The words are like a slap in the face to Chibi, and his eyes show it; but his face doesn’t move, doesn’t even show that it’s killing him to say he doesn’t trust his partner.

“I’m sorry, but I can’t trust you with this. I know you too well to trust you with such a dangerous force.” And Chibi leaves it at that. There are no fist-fights like the last time, nor yelling that shakes the walls; there are just two resolute men, facing away from one another.


	89. bright

The stars shine bright against Qilby’s tired eyes, and he lets the night sky envelop him, until he feels a body flop down next to him on the grass.

“Hey, stranger.” Qilby doesn’t have to look over to know it’s Chibi; he’d know that voice anywhere. He smiles and rolls over, but doesn’t move his eyes from the starry sky, putting him in an awkward position where his face is craned skyward but his body is lying on its side.

“What brings you out here?” Qilby asks, and Chibi settles one arm around Qilby and the other to prop his head up.

“I needed a break, and I figured you’d be here.” Chibi grins. “I haven’t seen you in a week, you know.”

“I can keep track of time on my own.” It’s a half-hearted jibe; Chibi sticks his tongue out in response. Qilby’s tired and playful enough that he bites it, and they pull together into a short but open-mouthed kiss.

“We’re supposed to be adults,” Chibi says. Qilby can’t help but laugh at that.

“ _I’m_  an adult, but I don’t know about  _you._ ”

“Hey, I’m only silly because I’m serious the rest of the time!”

Chibi shines bright against Qilby’s tired eyes, and they let the night sky envelop them.


	90. stories

Being that Qilby’s about six hundred thousand years old, one would expect him to have stories, and he has them in abundance.

“So what sorts of memories did I want you to keep safe, back then?” They lie in bed, nude and hatless, wrapped up in half-asleep bed-talk; their voices come out more as murmurs than fully-formed thoughts. Chibi has spent his entire day talking in his leader-voice, so he’s not too keen on talking loudly at a moment like this, anyway. Qilby laughs at the question.

“There are so many, it would take days to tell you them all.” Chibi is less-than-satisfied with the answer.

“Give me the short version, then.”

“Well…” and Qilby takes two hours, perhaps too many considering how late it is, explaining every tiny memory he thinks Chibi should know about. He has everything in his mind, everything from how Chibi developed things he didn’t realize he developed to how they spent days wrapped up in one another gazing up at the stars. From the time they raced tiny wooden boats down the river to the time they got so frustrated with one another that they got into a fistfight over curry, every minute detail to Qilby is one of the most important things he can keep.

By the time Qilby notices Chibi is sleeping, he’s already drifting off himself, but he notices the tiny smile on Chibi’s face and feels his heart warm. Maybe, somewhere in there, his Wakfu itself remembers.


	91. chime

The chime tells them it’s midday.

They work in tandem, barely saying a word; they don’t need to. The plans were hashed out weeks ago, and all that’s left now is to work out the bugs, of which there are plenty enough to frustrate them. Chibi sticks his tongue out of the side of his mouth; Qilby grits his teeth.

Without even trying they’ve developed a system of Looks, all meaning distinctly different things, so as not to waste their breath in the winter chill. A slightly quirked eyebrow means  _you’re going to mess that up._  A dramatically quirked eyebrow means  _you messed that up._  An insistent flicker of eyes means _no, no, watch what I’m doing!_  A quick kiss means something along the lines of _you didn’t screw it up this time, keep going._

Night falls, and they light lanterns without realizing they’re doing it. Finally, after too many hours, it works, and they can hardly believe it – it  _works_  and they didn’t break it this time. They test the damn thing all the ways they can think of, making sure it doesn’t implode if it’s touched the wrong way, and they come up with nothing, which is the best thing they could think of happening right now. Besides tumbling into bed tearing each other’s clothes off, of course.

When the chime tells them it’s midnight, they don’t even hear it.


	92. laugh

Qilby can’t remember why he’s laughing, but he figures it was something Chibi said. Maybe it was something about the tofu that’s flying away…

Oh, that’s it. Chibi started to baby talk to the thing, and it got angry and pecked him on the nose. He can tell because of the slightly bloody red spot  _right on Chibi’s nose, right in the middle_ —

He’s cracking up again and goddess knows he hasn’t laughed this hard in years. Chibi scowls, but eventually the laughter gets to him, and he’s on the ground too. Qilby’s face is red and his sides are killing him but he can’t  _stop,_  not when Chibi’s started too and they’re both collapsed on top of one another with a tiny speck of Chibi’s blood dripping onto Qilby’s cheek.

Just when they’ve stopped and are trying to catch their breath, another tofu comes by, and when Chibi yells at it to leave Qilby loses it anew.

He really doesn’t know why he finds it this funny. It’s probably because he likes seeing Chibi humbled. Nevertheless, it’s as though the laughter carries some of his stress away from him, and he falls over sated into a still-laughing Chibi’s lap.


	93. hold

At the end of the day, Qilby loves to hold Chibi tightly and breathe in his scent.

There’s something comforting about having him so close. Maybe it’s his warmth, the way he snuggles into Qilby’s shoulder without realizing he’s doing it. Maybe it’s the way they talk without inhibitions in these tiny moments. Maybe it’s the look in his eyes as they meet, like he’s happy just to stay for a while.

Maybe it’s just that the Krosmoz made them for one another, made them to be partners, and being lovers evolved smoothly from that. It’s nearly impossible to see someone at their most vulnerable, see them day in and day out, and fit so perfectly with them and  _not_  fall in love.

No, this is more than “love,” Qilby thinks. It’s something bigger, something that could last a million years. Even the annoying sound of Chibi’s snoring is something he can appreciate and love just like that brilliant mind of his.

“Hey.” When did Chibi wake up? Qilby doesn’t know, but he guesses it was only a few seconds ago. “Don’t move around so much.”

“Did I move?” Qilby didn’t realize he had.

“You were squeezing me.” He realizes, then, that lost in these thoughts he was holding Chibi tighter.


	94. those nights

“It’s one of those nights, isn’t it,” he says to the air, to nobody in particular.

The lantern flickers gently, the only light in the room save that of the stars pouring through his window. It’s cold, bitter cold, and it seems even pulling a blanket over his shoulders helps so little. And his bed… his bed, so damnably empty on the far side of the room.

It should be  _theirs_. The linens on it should be so permeated with a prophet’s scent alongside his own that they mingle into one. The right side of the bed – his side, always his side – should be weighted down right now with one specific sleep-talking middle-aged man. They should be asleep together with the rush of exploration, of learning, still running through their bodies.

So why is he up long into the night, trying to distract himself? He understands him completely, to his  _core_ , so why doesn’t he remember? Why can’t that man remember, why can’t he remember what they had, what they  _have_ , why is he sleeping in a woman’s bed right now? Why does he have to remember it, every—damned— _thing_  while the one other Eliatrope who could understand walks away?

He’s not a man to be satisfied by any less than his greatest desires, but sometimes he wishes he was. The pen breaks in his fist.


	95. snowball fights

Qilby drinks his tea, dips his quill in ink again, and stares at Chibi and Nora whispering in the distance. He doesn’t know what they’re planning, but it looks too damned conspiratorial to ignore; yet even when he strains his ears, he can’t hear a word. He thinks –  _thinks­_ – Chibi is teaching Nora and Efrim how to make snowballs; he’ll have to remember to watch out for those two having a snowball fight later. He’s been in the middle of those, and it hasn’t been pretty.

He sips his tea again, and gets a horribly undignified wad of snow straight in the nose.

A quick whip of his head reveals the culprit: Chibi tries to pretend Nora did it, but Qilby knows that stupid grin too well to possibly be fooled. And Nora – that damn girl, she’s  _laughing!_  She’s almost falling over laughing at the sight of him, scowling with a faceful of freezing snow.

Childish though it may be, he wants  _revenge._  He gathers a scoop of the cold white and stalks over, and Chibi puts his arms out reflexively in front of him to block Qilby’s throw.

And instead, Qilby shoves the snow down the back of Chibi’s shirt.

Chibi yelps wildly and starts jumping around to try and shake the snow out, and Nora starts giggling again.

“That was  _terrible,_  Qilby!”

“Well, he should know by now not to instigate.”


	96. books

The minute Chibi feels himself drifting off by the fire, Qilby edges in next to him on the couch with a book. The bearded man worms his way under the blanket (how? Chibi was sure he had it securely wrapped around him), and their arms rest comfortably together.

“Hello, Qilby.” Chibi smirks; he hadn’t expected Qilby to get over their argument so quickly. “Still mad?”

“Yes.” Qilby doesn’t move, though; instead, he snuggles into Chibi’s arm and opens his book again. Chibi wraps an arm around him obligingly.

“You’ll get over it.” If the cuddling is any indication, Qilby’s already halfway over it – but it’s almost like that man savors grudges. He’s been known to stay mad for years, some thousand in poor Yugo’s case, but Chibi notices Qilby can’t stay pissed with him long. After all, he yearns to be understood somewhere in that heart of his.

“I will.” They spend the next few minutes in calm quiet, Qilby reading and Chibi mindlessly stroking his hair. It’s warm with two people and a fire, but it’s a pleasant warmth against the bitter cold of the night air, and when Chibi peeks around to see what Qilby’s reading the other man doesn’t mind.


	97. fidgety

Chibi has incredibly fidgety hands.

He’s not sure whether it’s a cause or effect of always working with delicate machinery, with such precision that he can control every tiny twitch of muscle, but he knows that whenever his hands sit idle too long they crawl with a restless itch. It’s as if they’re telling him _keep moving! keep doing things! the way of Wakfu isn’t to sit around idle!_

Regardless, Qilby knows it’s fucking annoying.

His current fidgeting object – because he’s always got to have one, else he goes certifiably insane – is a tube with an attached cap that he pushes on, then flicks back off again. Not only does it make an obnoxious clicking noise that Qilby’s convinced if he has to hear it for thirty more seconds he’s going to make Chibi _eat_ the damned thing, the scientist is completely transfixed by the movements his hands make.

Chibi has excellent hands, he thinks; callused, rough and wide but with the smoothest skin one could imagine on the back of his palm. And with the way one of them is moving up and down the stupid little tube, to flick and then push down, it looks just like—

Oh, Goddess, surely he isn’t thinking about _this._ Surely he isn’t _aroused_ by the implications of the soft caress of Chibi’s thumb against the cap. Surely he isn’t imagining—

“If you’re going to jack something off, you could at least come over here and do it.” And surely those words, tinged with irritation, didn’t just leave his mouth. Oh well; Chibi’s grin is worth it.


	98. scars

Chibi, when he’s finally wrestled Qilby’s shirt off, finds himself examining the other man’s scars.

They’re many even on the surface, pinkish and bright white marks marring pale skin, and he stops to trace one running down Qilby’s chest with his fingertips as if to commit the raised skin to memory. He remembers well enough where the scar came from, that tussle with a horde of gobballs that ended in Qilby having to suture his own chest (while making pathetic pained noises that Chibi never wants to hear again) and Chibi just _barely_ beating them down; and it’s that memory, that shared scar, that he leans down and kisses gently.

“What are you looking at?” Qilby asks, a hint of amusement in his voice as he looks down at the crown of Chibi’s head. “Surely it can’t be that interesting.”

“You,” he replies, kissing the scar again, then the smaller ones surrounding it. He doesn’t know if it’s accident that he stops over Qilby’s heart, surely scarred itself, and presses his cheek to it fondly. “Your body’s like a map of where we’ve been. It’s fascinating.”

“A short-lived map,” Qilby’s quick to remind, but then he flips Chibi swiftly over onto his back and pulls his shirt up. “So, may I see your scars as well?” Before Chibi can answer, Qilby’s already kissing them better, the way the best of doctors can.


	99. storm

When they can finally tumble into the building from where the clouds are raining down on them in thick sheets, Chibi remarks that Qilby looks like a drowned rat. Qilby replies that Chibi doesn’t look much better, so he should probably keep his mouth shut.

The first order of business is letting their clothes dry. It’s an ordeal to get the fabric off, with the way it clings to their bodies, and they’re glad nobody else is around because the wet hats have to come _off, now_ , but eventually the cloth falls to the ground in a messy heap of white and black. They can’t find it in them to care that they should be hung up, not now when they’re just focused on not being soaked to the bone.

Towels are retrieved, somewhere in the scuffle; Qilby doesn’t know if he or Chibi got them, but he knows they’re warm and feel like _heaven_ against his skin. Suddenly, a fluffy towel is rubbing against Qilby’s beard, and he looks up to see Chibi more focused on drying him than he should be.

But oh, it feels so _nice;_ the way Chibi glides the towel over his body, over his shoulders and the water beading at the small of his back, over his stomach and his thighs and then back up to ruffle through his soaked hair. Admitting he enjoys being doted on like this, being thoroughly dried off when he could well do it himself, though, is a step Qilby’s not willing to take right now; so he simply enjoys the moment.


	100. family

All is quiet save the roar of the fire.

The new year started at least an hour ago, and everyone else has fallen asleep, save Qilby, Chibi, and Nora sharing tea and a seat by the warmest place in the house. Qilby only had one blanket, one that he intended to use for himself while he read; he doesn’t understand how both his partner and his ‘daughter’ thought they were entitled to slide themselves under it as well. He certainly doesn’t understand why Nora’s _up_ , considering it is _well_ past the time she should be in bed.

Chibi peeks over Qilby’s shoulder at what he’s reading. It’s medical stuff; certainly not his forte. The machinery of an Eliatrope body is far too meaty and kludged together for him to possibly work with; he doesn’t understand how Qilby does it. He still keeps reading along, though, and soon Nora’s poking her head in too and he closes the book to rest his eyes.

Yet, he doesn’t mind when Nora falls asleep against his shoulder, her breathing slowing out but still quite audible in his ear. He doesn’t mind when Chibi takes his glasses off for him and kisses his eyelids that are rapidly closing on him. He simply holds Chibi close, wraps his arm around Nora, and lets their makeshift family be without questioning.


End file.
